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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

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Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book

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Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

263 reviews
Sales Rank: 144

Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 720
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.3

ISBN: 0312427999
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.122
EAN: 9780312427993
ASIN: 0312427999

Publication Date: June 24, 2008
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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.

"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq'' civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves… Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the 'War on Terror' to Halliburton and Blackwater… After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts… New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened." Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes "produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today." Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld.

There's little doubt Klein's book--which arrived to enormous attention and fanfare thanks to her previous missive, the best-selling No Logo, will stir the ire of the right and corporate America. It's also true that Klein's assertions are coherent, comprehensively researched and footnoted, and she makes a very credible case. Even if the world isn't going to hell in a hand-basket just yet, it's nice to know a sharp customer like Klein is bearing witness to the backroom machinations of government and industry in times of turmoil. --Kim Hughes

Product Description

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."

Customer Reviews: Read 258 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Conclusions not based on adequate evidence September 6, 2008
Naomi Klein is trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. She tries to claim free market economic policies can only be imposed undemocratically and makes a not very compelling argument linking proponents of free market economics and physical torture. The book is only convincing if one is largely ignorant of the real facts surrounding Klien's case study analyses.

The book is so full of holes, it is difficult to know where to begin. It focuses on examples of economic policy decisions by various nations around the globe. Since many of her examples suffer from the same flaws, I'll focus on one. In Klein's discussion of the new post-apartheid government of South Africa in the mid-1990s, she lambastes it for not embarking on radical reforms she favors. According to Klein, it should have repudiated debts, nationalized industries, given politicians the power to run the central bank and printed money to meet spending demands above what taxes or borrowing might have brought in, among other things. The new government was dominated by the Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, which was hardly the right-wing entity but it did adopt a pragmatic program and a decade and half later it is one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, but Klein judges its record as "scandalous." Curiously, another country that borders South Africa did adopt many of her recommendations. Yet the name "Zimbabwe" appears no where in the text of the book. Perhaps it if had, Klein would have had to explain how hyperinflation and a collapsed economy are good things. It isn't that Klien's analysis is always wrong, but rather the evidence used is so selective, it is clear that she arrives a conclusion and looks for evidence to support it and ignores anything that might contradict it, rather than determining a conclusion based on available evidence.

Klein simply doesn't care or doesn't understand the trade offs in economic policy. In the 1980s, governments in Latin America were hit by bouts of hyperinflation as governments printed money to finance spending. She admits the hyperinflation is a bad thing but acts as though it occurred spontaneously in a vacuum and then attacks the successful measures that were taken to tame it. As an alternative of the actual strategy to combat hyperinflation in the case of Bolivia, she offers a vapid alternative that seeks "mobilize support and share the burden through a negotiated process involving key stakeholders." Well, that sounds well and good, but she offers no examples of that approach taming hyperinflation. What is more, the mobilization and strikes in opposition to the anti-inflation polices suggest some stakeholders weren't exactly willing to cooperate, thus, what she really offers is no alternative at all. Which gets to one of central weaknesses in Klein's argument, trade offs can't just be wished away. State-owned industries may be fine and dandy but if the government is going bankrupt trying to keep them afloat, refusing to alter the status quo isn't an option. Klein has an almost religious faith in the state to wave a wand and do good (which is not to say it does do no good, just it isn't as capable a Klein would have her readers believe). Rather than acknowledging real world choices, Klein deems every rollback of state power is some hidden corporate conspiracy.

A more realistic look at developmental policies is provided "In Defense of Globalization" by Jagdish Bhagwati.

3 out of 5 stars

Shock Doctrine September 5, 2008
I have very little Economy in my background but like the theme and her writing but after 8 chapters I hope to bring things together as I agree with what she is saying. Corporate America is and has been responsible for much of our ills today.

5 out of 5 stars

Important reading for contemporary understanding today. September 5, 2008
This book gets my highest rating. Probably one of the most important books I've read on contemporary culture. Ranks up there with Noam Chomsky and G. Edward Griffin's "The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve". READ THIS BOOK !!!

5 out of 5 stars

Shock Doctrine August 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is a must read book for every American. We have been brainwashed and misinformed for many years. What this country is going through now is no accident. We are now beginning to experience what others have been put through over the years. When will we wake up?

5 out of 5 stars

The second colonial pillage and the essence of dehumanization August 30, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Naomi Klein unveils in this hard-hitting book (naming names) extremely clearly the economic utopia and the shameful realities resulting from the neo-liberal policies of the Chicago School of Economics, also called `The Washington Consensus'.

What
Its defenders claim that the free market is a perfect scientific system, in which individuals acting on their own self-interested desire, create the maximum benefit for all.
But, as no country or city wanted to implement deliberately their policies, its powerful fundamentalist defenders, together with their long arm, the IMF, used and created shocks (wars, military coups, political upheavals, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, epidemics, energy and resource shortages) to force a second shock of radical social and economic engineering on traumatized populations.

Where
Naomi Klein analyzes brilliantly a long list of victims of the shock doctrine of which the most important are: Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Iraq, Russia, Indonesia, Poland, South-Africa, former Yugoslavia and its republics, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Thailand, New Or leans and the US as a whole.

How
This radical economic cure consisted intentionally in eliminating the public sphere, in giving total freedom to private interests and in providing only skeletal social spending. Sometimes with the help of the IMF as their obedient mediator, State and corporate wealth was cut into pieces and sold of for a trifle in debased currencies to private, mostly foreign, interests: airlines, phone and water systems, oilfields, all kind of corporations and factories (sometimes direct competitors), mineral deposits or farmlands.

Private bonanza, public hell
Those policies created a formidable bonanza for transnational corporations, oligarchs and investment banks.
For the majority of the population, the results were less than bleak, rather hellish:
Not democracy, but dictatorship
Not peace, but war, tortures or simply assassinations (the essence of dehumanizing)
Not freedom for the populations, but for the corporations
Not hiring, but mass unemployment (putting people in a starvation position)
Not civil liberties, but aggressive surveillance
Not clean commerce, but rampant corruption
Not broadly based wealth, but turning 25 to 60 % of the population into a permanent underclass
Not clean air and water, but environmental degradation

US
In the US, the core of the governmental tasks (the military, the police, fire departments, power, covert intelligence, disease control, public schools) was subcontracted to private interests.

Future
But the tide is turning against disaster capitalism. The IMF is nearly out of business.
Democratic socialism, always regarded by those in power as a greater threat than totalitarian communism, is clearly on the march, especially in South-America.

Naomi Klein's formidable book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.

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