Market economics are based on the assumption that individuals be free to choose what goods and services to buy and from whom, in which the nineteenth century Anglo-Saxon legal doctrine of Freedom of Contract is rooted.

The shortcomings of a doctrinaire interpretation of such a view is that freedom of contract also presupposes equality between the contracting parties. But it has frequently been the case that parties to an "agreement" are far from equal. An agreement may be legally binding but if coercive, would clearly be inequitable to allow its enforcement. In societies where justice and equity are respected, the courts will be expected to intervene.

In what sense, for example, is an employee in an equal bargaining position with an employer, a tenant with a landlord or a borrower with a lender? And so it has become generally accepted to legislate for adjustments in the coercive power that the few have over the many in economic relations.

Prior to the overthrow of its democratically elected socialist government by the Neocon backed military regime of Augusto Pinochet, in spite of the disproportionate wealth and power of its ruling elite, Chile nevertheless had in place a protectionist tariff system that whilst ostensibly sheltering "inefficient" national firms from foreign competition at least ensured that there was some basic provision for the very poor and that ordinary Chileans enjoyed certain fundamental rights. Pinochet and the Neocon ideologues advising his regime, quickly swept away such rights when they seized power by force of arms since Neocon labour policies require workers to be in a state of abject desperation.

Pinochet also conclusively showed that the policies of globalisation inevitably result in widespread social disruption and confrontation which is of course precisely their intention. Many people will simply not surrender their most basic rights without a fight. For this reason, Neocon ideology can only be imposed by authoritarian rule; in Chile's case, by mass arrests, enforced disappearances, death squads and the endemic use of torture and other flagrant curtailments of human rights; under Iraq's new U.S. backed puppet regime, by much the same means.

Thatcher and Reagan, successfully adapted but essentially emulated the Chilean dictator's policies which they had quietly observed, admired and applauded, and whilst their monetarist policies were not imposed with the same degree of savagery, they were enforced with the same mental costume of ruthlessness, relish, arrogance and contempt for the poor and weak, with social consequences just as divisive and resulting in the destruction of rights, especially for workers, that had taken more than a century of bitter political struggle to achieve.

Even the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and China were impressed by the results and took note. They quickly realised from the example of Chile, that it would be possible to open their previously closed markers to foreign capital so as to rebuild their bankrupt and moribund economies, without conceding any political freedoms. China in particular, declared that it would remodel its economy on that of Chile. Indeed, this goes far in explaining the apparent paradox of Capitalist America's increasing fiscal and economic dependence on Communist China.

After Pinochet, then Thatcher and Reagan, globalisation had come of age.

Its effect is insidious because it enables the world's largest and richest to transfer industrial and agricultural production to countries where dirt-poor and desperate people will put up with the kind of working conditions that have long since been outlawed in the advanced democracies.

Under globalisation, movements of commodities, capital and profits are to be unrestrained. People, on the other hand, are to remain where they are. If not admitted to the new elite, the greater part of the world's population is fated to be consigned either to remaining as the detainees of exploitative tyrannies such as that which prevails in China or as captive consumers having no choice but to buy cheap merchandise produced under slave labour conditions. In the more developed world, formerly well-paid manufacturing work is displaced by low paid, service-sector jobs in retailing and distribution. Adding insult to injury, impoverished consumers are bound to buy these cheap imports because, since their incomes and living standards have so declined, they cannot afford to do otherwise. For a glimpse at the workers and consumers of the Neocon future, look no further than the aisles of your local Wal-Mart store, for the Neocon dream is of a world dominated by a handful of mega corporations over which they are to smugly preside, with no financial or moral responsibility for the social disruption and harm that their policies inflict as they maximise their private gains whilst socialising their costs and losses. Far from allowing markets to work, and to create genuine wealth, their tactics are to manipulate and distort markets in a Potemkin economy as a mantle for plunder and fraud by a new kleptocracy so blatant and arrogant that it can scarcely bother to conceal its own dishonesty.

Their strategy is to defund governments of corporate taxes as far as possible, to strip them of the revenues needed to ameliorate the sufferings of the massive underclass their policies inevitably create.

The Neocons have no use for government other than as defenders of their own persons and property from the justifiable resentment of the enraged and impoverished majority. With characteristic ingenuity, they perceive further opportunity to enrich themselves even from the very social distempers that potentially threaten them, whether by investment in the increased demand for weaponry, riot control gear, security equipment and surveillance systems or the provision of so-called military "contractors" and privatised prisons. For the latter, there is to be an assuredly, ever increasing demand as unrest and dissent becomes endemic. Even locking people up therefore presents itself as a lucrative business opportunity. This goes some way to explaining the Neocon penchant for an inflamatory and controntational "zero-tolerance" approach to law enforcement and a posture of self-righteous, vengeful retribution masquerading as criminal justice.

The supposed "War Against Terrorism" is indeed an elaborate sham in the truest Orwellian sense. Its purpose is utterly cynical. It is to inculcate a climate of fear, hysteria and intolerance so that the surrender of power to a secretive elite will seem more natural. It is indeed a war being waged by governments, but in reality, not against supposed terrorists but their own people. It is to furnish the Neocon elite with a justification for criminalising the widespread unrest and dissent that their policies inevitably cause and on which their power is to rest. Measures that suppress individual freedoms and fundamental rights will indeed be essential to the new governing and owning class that will have every reason to be fearful of its own safety. The clear objective is to legitimise the acceptance by society of the right of those who govern, to arrest, detain without trial and if necessary, torture and murder those who dare to challenge their agenda.

To defeat the Neocons, every means possible therefore have to be deployed. Ideally, we should always seek to do so by peaceful means; but if not, we may well need to return to the Neocons their own false bill of goods, through violent resistance and armed struggle and we should brace ourselves to do so.

As Brecht memorably observed: Fascism is dead, but the bitch that bore it is still on heat



John Rhys-Burgess, 60, is a member of the Human Rights Law Committee of the International Bar Association, London, the Human Rights Commission of the Union des Avocats Europeens, Luxembourg; the European Bar Human Rights Institute, Paris and the International Criminal Bar at The Hague.