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In her ground-breaking reporting Naomi Klein introduced the term “disaster capitalism.” Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic “shock treatment”, losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.
The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman’s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement’s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia and Iraq.
At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
Keynes vindicated
| Customer Rating:  | Roll on Naomi Klein! I think she has hit the nail right on the head
When I was studying economics at Australia's Monash University between 1965 and 1969, our first three years were devoted to the study of the economics of John Maynard Keynes, a man with both heart and soul. Then in the final year, our Professor suddenly announced: "Forget all you have learned to date. We're now teaching the monetary theories of Milton Friedman." I felt betrayed and abandoned.
Now, with the bailout of the banks, the tables are turned. Keynes was right all along. The results of forty years of unmitigated corporate greed are now being exposed for all to see. It is only to be hoped that America doesn't continue to gorge itself until, like Mr Creosote in the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life, it explodes and leaves a disgusting mess for the rest of the world to clean up! |
great new info
| Customer Rating: | This book is a real eyeopener about our government and its manipulating ways.
A "must read" for everyone. |
The Ida Tarbell of Our Time
| Customer Rating:  | Naomi Klein has exposed Milton Friedman and the "Chicago Boys" just as Ida Tarbell exposed John D. Rockefeller in an earlier time. In other words, beware of those who worship "markets"--usually such worshippers leave out the fact that the only capitalistic enterprises they worship are the ones they control. Any competing companies (or schools of thought) must be destroyed.
Is it any wonder that Friedman became a god at the University of Chicago, the House that Rockefeller built? Rockefeller destroyed the lives of his competitors, and was anything but a free market man. He and men like Carngegie didn't believe in capitalism for others--they were monopolists, and used government to protect their monopolies, just as the multinationals do today.
Klein does an excellent job of ripping off the "free market" mask of Friedman, just as Tarbell did of Rockefeller. You can bet that she has made herself many enemies among the monopolists of today, just as Tarbell did. I appreciate her fearlessness and point of view.
I only give the book 4 stars instead of 5 because, halfway through it, I was needing to come up for air--she proves her point over and over and over again, and it becomes very depressing after a while. I asked myself how Friedman could be such a hero to so many, if only half of what she fully documents is true.
The "free marketers/free traders" want us to be slave of corporations. The socialists/communists want us to be slaves of the state. The fascists want us to be slaves to both. Who wants us to be free? None of the above. Pick your poison, folks. They're all the same in the end, and they all despise the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--whether Bush or Kerry, Obama or McCain, they all will sell us down the river for a mess of pottage.
An important book, one that will change most people's view of so-called "free markets". |
The Dark Side of Unrestricted Capitalism
| Customer Rating: | The Shock Doctrine is a fascinating exposé on the dark side of unrestricted capitalism when it is implemented through blackmail, extortion, military force, and the suppression of democracy. Naomi Klein provides numerous examples over the last 50 years of countries who upon falling into financial and economic crises, desperately turn to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for financial and economic assistance to stabilize and rebuild their economies. These countries soon discover that the World Bank and IMF are staunch promoters of capitalism and free-market economics, and will only provide aid on the condition that unrestricted capitalist policies be instantaneously and shockingly adopted by these countries, using lethal force if necessary, to suppress existing socialist ideologies and organizations, and even to suppress the will of the countries people who may be democratically opposed. This is what Klein refers to as "disaster capitalism", the introduction of unrestricted free-market economics in crisis and disaster situations with the short-term goal of engaging in excessive profiteering, and the long-term goal of assuming absolute control of those economies. And when disaster capitalism is implemented with the shock therapy approach normally associated with modern torture techniques, we have what Klein refers to as the "shock doctrine".
In every example cited by Klein, where countries were literally forced to adopt unrestricted free-market policies (privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization, cessation of government spending, cessation of unionization, suppression of democratic assembly, unrestricted foreign ownership, unwarranted price increases, higher taxation, and intentional mass unemployment) in order to receive financial and economic aid, these countries went into an economic death spiral as their state resources and infrastructure were sold away to foreign owners for cents on the dollar, and the foreign owners were under no obligation to re-invest back into the countries economy. The financial assistance received from the World Bank and IMF was not used to benefit the newly created masses of poor and jobless people who needed it most, but instead was used to benefit the promoters of disaster capitalism.
The only drawback to Klein's book is that she tends to blame disaster capitalism on its economic architects, and not on the governments and corporations who sponsor it. Consequently, Klein's portrayal of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics as evil incarnate is unwarranted. There is nothing wrong with capitalism and free-market economics when it is implemented under the right conditions. Klein fails to recognize the fact that these economists were acting not just as economic agents of the World Bank and IMF, but also as foreign policy agents of the US government, and globalization agents of American multinational corporations. Klein also fails to acknowledge that these same governments and corporations were engaging in dishonest, unethical, undemocratic, and even criminal behavior when promoting their self-serving political, social, and economic agendas. One fact is clear from Klein's book, disaster capitalism as a means to globalization and American world dominance will not work in countries that embody true democracy. |
Nothing new here, move along
| Customer Rating: | The only thing that is true, and has been known in fact for a century, is that dramatic events cause change. On this I can agree with Ms. Klein, and only that.
Where this book careens off into left field, is by blaming this all on Milton Friedman and labelling it Friedmanism - all on the basis of a quote, and completely ignoring the history of the Nazis and the Kristallnacht, or the Marxists and the July Days in Russia. Milton Friedman made an observation (why certainly - he's Jewish, the people who suffered disproportionately from the effects of such kinds of propaganda under both regimes), but he surely did not invent the method. Blame the Marxists and the Nazis for perfecting that.
Do yourself a favour, and buy the The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, his thesis is free of partisan politics and delves far further with laser sharp understanding, into how change through improbable events can happen. |
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