Shock Doctrine the Rise of Disaster Capitalism

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Average customer rating 4.9 (11 comments)

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This book will open your eyes to the neoliberal corporate agenda of both political parties.

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Wonderful book. Eye opening.

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After several years, and at the urging of Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers' Union, I have finally read this important book. Klein explains how economic Neoliberal elites use (or create if necessary) shocks (wars, coups d'etat, natural disasters, financial crises) to extract wealth from the public sphere and funnel it up to the 1%. In many cases situations that may appear like bonehead mistakes which caused chaos and great misery (the Iraq War; American support for the looting of government enterprises in the former Soviet Union, for two examples), were planned and happily used by the capitalists who were pulling the strings to help them consolidate their financial power. The ideology of Neoliberalism - the worldview that everything the government does should be privatized, that greed is good and the more greed there is the better, and that poor people deserve what they've got - demands of its disciples a blank slate on which to work, because normal people left to themselves are not going to go with the program. Hence the use of crises as opportunities to remove all obstacles to creating a new system. To me (Klein doesn't make the comparison), this sounds a lot like the Khmer Rouge's plans for Cambodia - in order to create a truly rational and beneficial state, they had to clear out everything first. Sorry for all the people that had to be killed, but that's the price of progress! Neoliberalism doesn't work much better than Pol Pot's regime - a permanent immiseration of 30% - 60% of the population, the creation of an extremely wealthy class of owners/powerbrokers, and hell with everybody else. That is, unless this is what "success" looks like to a Neoliberal economist. For normal, non-sociopathic people, Klein helps us focus on what we have to fight against to maintain a society whose goal is to benefit all of us.

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The Shock Doctrine is a wake up call to the policies of the United States toward other nations. Klein documents behind the scenes deals that included conspiring with dictators of foreign countries. I highly recommend this book as it is an eye opener.

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I have been a serious reader for more than 50 years, studied and taught philosophy and literature, and I would rank this book near or at the top of the most important books ever. Of course, it fulfills that ranking only if it gets read, much and well. Klein reveals where "the bodies are buried" in the history of US foreign policy and does it by recombining the unexceptionable facts we all know (or are reminded we once knew) in a new way, as a single intricately planned and forcefully controlled economic war on the poor, the Southern hemisphere, and those who do promising work for Progressive improvements in the life of anyone not of the "Parasite Class". There is no single book I know which will more certainly force the epiphanic recognition that we live in the belly of a terrible and, in terms of our foreign dealings, evil beast, totally under the control of apparently sociopathic men whose faces differ as they pass down their power but whose goals and methods almost never veer from the plan. Klein resists the charismatic flights that both the material and her writing powers would make easy and instead is just relentless and steady as she helps the reader study what we are no longer able to turn our eyes from.

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One of the most ambitious, trenchant & relevant books of the decade, Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," arrived in the midst of globalization, war on terror and the Bush presidency. Klein is an unapologetic leftist who attacks the basic and often taken for granted tenants of free market capitalism, exposing its dark ideological heart and its disastorous consequences for the poor and disenfranchised. Fiercely intelligent, challenging and articulate, this is one of the rare books the can change the way you think.

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Ms. Klein's book is a brilliantly-written, heavily-documented economic history of our era and a shocking expose of the abuses of the much-praised "free market." This is essential reading if you would gain an understanding of what has happened to the middle class in America and of what has gone so terribly wrong with our country.

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Brilliant if a little opportunistic.

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Read "The Shock Doctrine" If I have one regret about My Experience in the Bachelor's completion program @ CIIS in 2006, it is that we did not read Naomi Klein's Magnum Opus during Global Integral Cohort (It should be required reading to graduate High School)- More than anything I have read, it uncovers the Fantasist Fascist Illuminati, which exploit the fundamentals of the current Amerikan Nightmare, and the history of Collapse- It names names, and with forensic precision measures the amount of blood under our nails. If you have not read it, please consider putting it next on any personal lists- Much Love and Grace under Fire, Dr. Con

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Ms. Klein hits the nail on the head. Surprising insight from a journalist with nary an economic background. A must read.

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This is my new favorite nonfiction book! I don't know that I've ever read as important and relevant a book as this one. The depth of information Klein presents is incredible, and the book never drags despite its length. This book summarizes a perspective that is prevalent, but rarely enunciated in such clear terms. Awesome!!!