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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein
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Staff Pick
You wouldn't expect the author of the searing bestseller No Logo to pull any punches
Recommended by Chris Bolton, Powells.com
To be honest, I could not finish this book. It made me too angry. These are the stories about our country you don't want to know. Naomi Klein has cast a spotlight on the dark secrets lurking beneath the surface of the American dream. The Shock Doctrine makes it hard to ignore the tragedy that results from the ruthless logic of maximizing profit at the expense of the people.
Recommended by Orin, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews In this groundbreaking alternative history of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free-market economic revolution, Naomi Klein challenges the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory. From Chile in 1973 to Iraq today, Klein shows how Friedman and his followers have repeatedly harnessed terrible shocks and violence to implement their radical policies. As John Gray wrote in The Guardian, "There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books." Review: "'The neo-liberal economic policies — privatization, free trade, slashed social spending — that the 'Chicago School' and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous — depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting — their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market 'reforms' the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein ( No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market 'shock therapies' to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. (Sept.)' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "If Thomas L. Friedman has acquired the reputation of being the English-speaking world's foremost cheerleader of globalization, Naomi Klein has established herself as its principal naysayer. With the publication seven years ago of 'No Logo,' in the wake of the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Klein demonstrated that the 'just do it' triumphalism of Nike and other global brands masked ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) serious inequities and injustices. Her new book, 'The Shock Doctrine,' takes the argument an important step further. Neoliberal capitalism, she argues, thrives on catastrophe: Not only are fortunes made from the misfortunes of the masses, but the global dominance of free-market capitalism is built on the infliction of disasters on the world's less fortunate. Klein develops her position over 460-some closely argued pages of text, plus meticulous endnotes. The imposition of radical, Milton Friedmanesque free-market capitalism, she claims, often takes place when the targeted population is reeling from some exogenous shock: either a foreign invasion, like the 'shock and awe' takeover of Iraq in 2003, or a natural disaster, like the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, or even an economic meltdown, as occurred in Southeast Asia in 1997 and Argentina in 2001. The kind of disaster that shocks a society into losing its moorings, according to Klein, enables the votaries of the free market to come in and rewrite the rules, re-programming the behavior of entire countries. So L. Paul Bremer, with his impeccable suits and pseudo-military boots, rides roughshod over occupied Iraq, dismantling its state-owned industries while passing new laws to privatize everything and permit foreigners to repatriate all their profits; hyperinflation is curbed in Argentina and Bolivia by remedies ensuring that capitalists prevail; and in the Maldives, islanders temporarily displaced by the tsunami are permanently removed from their homes to free the islands for high-value tourist accommodations. Klein says that not even the United States is exempt from this approach: The tragedy of Katrina in New Orleans has been hailed, she claims, as an opportunity to clear poor blacks out of the city and transform it into a safe place for (white) capital. Katrina, Klein says, demonstrated vividly the inadequacy, indeed incompetence, of the state, and so provided a ready rationale for the private sector to take over. The prime contractors in the reconstruction of New Orleans are also, Klein points out, the leading contractors in Iraq and in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. She sees this as capitalism exploiting victims of disasters when they are at their most vulnerable and unsettled: People in need of aid are obliged to accept 'structural adjustment' policies that change their lives. In the wake of the disaster, fisherfolk in Sri Lanka and Thailand were prevented from rebuilding their waterfront homes, thereby reserving prime beach property for development. Milton Friedman had argued as far back as 1962 that 'only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change.' Klein takes him quite literally at his word, seeing his prescription as a sinister agenda for corporatization, abetted by the 'colonization of the World Bank and the IMF by (Friedman's conservative) Chicago School' and the adoption by those two institutions of the 'Washington Consensus' policy favoring private-sector-led development. This is part of my problem with Klein's thesis; she is too ready to see conspiracies where others might discern little more than the all-too-human pattern of chaos and confusion, good intentions and greed, playing out in the wake of catastrophes. Her opening chapters, for instance, recount the tale of a CIA-funded Montreal psychiatrist who conducted electroshock experiments on unwitting patients to de-program their minds and rebuild them as healthy people; Klein argues that this is precisely what the neoliberal 'shock doctrine' does to societies and economies, an analogy with torture that might cause apoplexy in the boardrooms of the IMF. She goes so far as to suggest that economists and policymakers are willing to deliberately precipitate crises to push their agendas. Klein's notion of disaster capitalism voraciously feeding on violent disruptions — the antithesis of the conventional wisdom that capitalism requires peace and tranquility to thrive — is a provocative one, partly vindicated by Halliburton's profit margins in Iraq. But it is also overstated, ascribing sinister motives to behavior generally prompted by more banal and benign (if sometimes wrongheaded) ideas. In caricaturing the 'shock docs' and their acolytes, Klein is often palpably unfair — as, for example, in her treatment of Jeffrey Sachs, perhaps the most passionate advocate for the world's responsibility to eliminate poverty. And her argument raises the question: If the private sector did not ride to the rescue after disasters, who would? The state has been withering away in much of the developing world, and nearly five decades of official development assistance have not built enough state capacity to transform the lives of poor people for the better. More and more governments, afflicted by corruption, bureaucratic sclerosis and inefficiency, are realizing that the private sector is an indispensable partner in the long quest for development. Klein acknowledges little of this. Despite its limitations, 'The Shock Doctrine' is a valuable addition to the corpus of popular books that have attempted to rethink the big ideas of our post-Cold War age. Francis Fukuyama's notion of the 'end of history' — the idea that all societies would be governed by liberal democracy and free markets — started the process of reflection; Samuel Huntington's concept of the 'clash of civilizations' underpinned much of the anxiety that followed the realization that reports of history's demise were exaggerated. Thomas Friedman's celebration of the flatness of the globalized world is now countered by Klein's argument that when disasters flatten societies, capitalists see opportunities to profit and spread their influence. Each thesis has its flaws, but each contributes to the contest of ideas about the shape and direction of our current Age of Uncertainty. For this reason, and for the vigor and accessibility with which she marshals her argument, Naomi Klein is well worth reading. Shashi Tharoor is a former Under Secretary General of the United Nations and the author, most recently, of 'The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century.'" Reviewed by Shashi Tharoor, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "While Naomi Klein's new book may paint a cartoonish portrait of Milton Friedman and his impact on American foreign and economic policy, this nonetheless is a deeply researched, profoundly passionate and highly readable left-wing screed that everyone would benefit from reading." Chauncey Mabe, the National Book Critics Circle's Most Recommended list, winter 2008Review: "Impassioned, hugely informative, wonderfully controversial, and scary as hell." John le Carré Review: "[S]uperbly constructed and written....It deserves to be widely read." San Francisco Chronicle Review: "[A] book that has the potential to become a lightning rod of controversy and debate." Toronto Star Review: "Klein's book incorporates an amount of due diligence, logical structure and statistical evidence that others lack. As a result, she is persuasive when she links past and present events, including the war in Iraq and trashing of its economy, to the systematic march of laissez-faire capitalism and the downsizing of the public sector as both a worldview and a political methodology." Kirkus Reviews Review: "Klein gives a freshness to examples that feel familiar — US oil companies in Iraq, tourist resorts in tsunami-destroyed beaches, privatisation after hurricane Katrina — by placing them in a wider context that includes Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973 and the Falklands conflict in 1982." The Observer About the Author Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker. Her first book, the international bestseller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, was translated into twenty-eight languages and called "a movement bible" by the New York Times. She writes an internationally syndicated column for The Nation and The Guardian and reported from Iraq for Harper's Magazine. In 2004, she released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina's occupied factories, co-produced with director Avi Lewis. She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and holds an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws degree from the University of King's College, Nova Scotia.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780312427993
- Subtitle:
- The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
- Author:
- Klein, Naomi
- Publisher:
- Picador USA
- Subject:
- POL033000
- Subject:
- Economic Conditions
- Subject:
- Free Enterprise
- Subject:
- Economic History
- Subject:
- Government & Business
- Subject:
- Capitalism
- Subject:
- Financial crises
- Edition Description:
- Reprint ed.
- Publication Date:
- June 2008
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 701
- Dimensions:
- 8.25 x 5.50 in
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