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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

2 reviews
Sales Rank: 69

Media: Paperback
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.1

ISBN: 0141024534
EAN: 9780141024530
ASIN: 0141024534

Publication Date: May 1, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

The Most Eye-OpeningBook of our Time May 9, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

Naomi Klein's book is one of the most eye-opening books of our time. I couldn't put it down. I thought I knew everything she talked about but no one else before has connected the dots like she has. Everyone should read this so they can understand what's really going on with American "free market" polices.

Just look at what's happening in Myanmar now, a true test of the shock doctrine thesis. The government has suspended the referendum so that they can recover from the cyclone but aren't letting foreign aid in!

Shock Doctrine should be read by everyone, especially students, to open their eyes to what's really going on in the world.

2 out of 5 stars

A twisted and frequently inchoate rant May 9, 2008
12 out of 17 found this review helpful

Seven years ago, while still a university student, the must read book at my alma mater was Naomi Klein's `No Logo.' A probing and insightful look into the way that corporations were taking over our high streets and lives, it was at once pertinent and relevant. I had only lived in London for a couple of years, and already witnessed how its high streets were transmogrifying into `any street/ any town'. In barely 18 months the coffee shop culture I had once loved had been wrecked by Starbucks, one of Klein's principle targets. Though those who said it was the `defining tome' of its generation or the `handbook of the anti-globalization' movement overstated its importance, `No Logo' was an outstanding and memorable book, a must-read, even.

Now, we have `The Shock doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' the long awaited follow up to `No Logo'.

Naomi Klein writes that this started out as a book about the privatization of the war on terror and became something else. `The truth [of its content] seems so bizarre,' she writes in an early chapter. It is `a book about shock. About how countries are shocked - by wars, terror attacks, coups d'etat and natural disasters . And then they are shocked again - by corporations and politicians who exploit their fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy. And then how people who dare to resist this shock politics are, if necessary, shocked for a third time - by police soldiers and prison officers...'

The premise and scope of the book are thus ambitious and promising. Klein's thesis is certainly original and thought-provoking. Unfortunately she is unable to support it without making ludicrous jumps between historical events, drawing incorrect conclusions, using cursory evidence, and painting a picture of a vast right wing global conspiracy that often verges on the ludicrous.

The target for most of her ire is Milton Friedman and the so-called Chicago School of economists, that have influenced the policy of every world leader from Augusto Pinochet to Margaret Thatcher to George W Bush. Alas, Klein gives the Chicago School far too much importance. She doesn't recognize them for what they are: academics, whose work is only ever taken and modified to suit the needs of the country it is applied to. The Chicago School has never changed the fate of a single country - only those that have employed their strategies have done that.

The picture Klein paints is one in which the Chicago School spend forty years traveling the world, coercing global politicians - many of whom are portrayed as dozy or unwitting - into implementing their theories. According to Klein these men are fanatics that live for the stripping down and privatization of the global economy. Omnipresent is Friedman, who is portrayed as a sort of `Dr Evil' figure pulling the strings behind this cabal. The impression one gets, if taking this thesis at face value, is not unlike that behind the infamous nineteenth century anti-Semitic tome `The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' which made out that the world was governed by a global Jewish conspiracy. Replace the Jews with Chicago School economics professors and you have the updated version - The Shock Doctrine.

To support this theory Klein twists and turns global historical events to fit her narrative. The context of the Cold War is ignored completely with regards events in the 1960s 70s and 80s (of course all US foreign policy was pretty much dictated by the Chicago School, wasn't it?). Mrs Thatcher launches the Falklands War not to defend British sovereign territory, but to allow her to privatize British state utilities. (That the Argentine defeat led to the overthrow of the hated military junta, a target of Klein in an earlier chapter is conveniently overlooked). The necessary reforms to bring the rotten and bankrupt former Communist countries up to date are lambasted at every turn. Poland, which underwent a particularly harsh form `shock therapy', and Russia, which was undermined by the corruption of the Yeltsin era, are the only examples given; not the Baltic states, Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Republic or Slovakia whose transitions were all smoother and are wealthy and well-integrated members of the EU 25 (an inconceivable notion in 1989). None of this would be extreme enough to fit her narrative.

Ignored also are the unquestioned success stories of those countries that have brought in liberal economic reforms, some modeled on the Chicago school. What of Ireland, once the sick man of Europe and now its richest country after oil rich Norway? Why not give some context on the reforms in Britain, where, pre-Thatcher, it was a strike ridden, ineffective country on an inexorable downward spiral? Why no mention of the colorlessness, economic pallor and corruption of the communist world?

There are other inconsistencies and twisted facts too. The South American junta leaders are (rightly) lambasted for their corruption. But when the IMF and World Bank get successor regimes to sign reforms designed to stop future leaders using the state treasuries as their current accounts, it is seen as part of the Chicago School's conspiracy.

Klein's use of figures can be sketchy too. She uses the NASDAQ and how it reacts `positively' to terrorist attacks to show how it suits those wicked capitalists for bad things to happen. Thus it jumps 7 points the day of the 7/7 bombings in London (she doesn't point out that this was about 0.2%) and 11.4 points the day a terror plot was thwarted in the UK the following year. This is obviously because it suits banks for bad stuff to happen because we live in a disaster economy, not because it might be down to ordinary fluctuations (not even that the jumps were anything out of the ordinary). She is rightly angry that an incompetent former governor of New Mexico is put in charge of post-invasion Iraq's educational program. But in contrasting New Mexico and Iraq's literacy rates, she uses figures from 1985.

She is better on her original subject - the privatization of the Iraq war. The corrupt, idiotic and wholly inefficient rule of the Bush administration is a perfect target, and her account of its work in Iraq, and also New Orleans, is a reminder of what a good journalist she can be. The chapters dealing with the betrayal of the Tsunami hit populations of South Asia are good - but then she spoils it with trying to draw it into her tirade against Friedman and the Chicago School.

It is only these parts that save the Shock Doctrine from oblivion. The rest is an uneven, frequently inchoate and self righteous rant that is utterly unconvincing if you read between the lines. Unfortunately there are those that will take everything she writes at face value, and repeat and adopt her many ludicrous stances. That is why this work is so detrimental to those - like me - seeking social justice in this world and ultimately a panacea to those she lambastes.