The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism By Naomi Klein
Men like Jonas Salk, Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover, these men thrive upon the continuance of segregation, violence, and disease. The purity they dost protest a need for, they dost feed upon. Thank You, Masked Man
Lenny Bruce
A divinely inspired work, Naomi Klein has tapped into the zeitgeist of modern day destruction capitalism. In 400-plus pages and extensive footnotes, she melts the myths surrounding the so-called global free market. Apparently, it is neither global, nor free and anything but a market. The Shock Doctrine, based on her historical research, and four years of boots-on-the-ground investigation by Klein, reveals the shocking truth that connects Pinochet’s Chile, the Falklands War, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian financial crisis and Hurricane Mitch all in terms of rapid fire corporate restructuring of these societies and their economies. Along the way, we go through Poland following communism, South Africa after apartheid, Sri Lanka recovering from the tsunami, Iraq after mission accomplished and New Orleans’ privatization post Katrina.
Enjoy the feeling of avoiding the usual hurricane evacuation nightmare. Help Jet Luxury Airlines of W. Palm Beach helps you avoid the next Katrina. : Actual ad pitch for Help Jet Luxury Airlines
The Shock Doctrine reads like an economic disaster film, Die Hard With a Calculator, if you will. Its antagonist is the late economist Milton Friedman and his gang of Chicago Boys, economic free marketeers trained by the University of Chicago to spread their gospel to an unreceptive and reluctant world.
Friedman argued that “only a crisis – actual or perceived –produces real change.”
The shocking truth is that most of the world’s economists now believe this. (He was given a Nobel Prize to make sure of the fact.)
At first you won’t believe this parallel history laid out by Klein and then later, near the end of the book, you will be unable to see the world in any other way than through the prism of Shock. It is the political equivalent of reading Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky for the first time. Whole swaths of recent history have been reinterpreted for the reader, who if you are like me, will be stunned that the connections hold up so solidly.
Klein flawlessly fuses the political torture of shock therapy with the economic torture of the shock doctrine. One of her themes is that these two techniques which originally operated on separate tracks, have now merged into one super runaway train.
Somehow global free market capitalism has become the new economic eugenics movement. How the hell did we get here?
In the 1950s an American psychiatrist by the name of Ewen Cameron performed barbaric experiments on thousands of unsuspecting patients at McGill University in Montreal. His theory was that massive amounts of shock therapy, LSD, paralyzing drugs and sensory deprivation combined for long periods of time, could strip the human mind of all its knowledge, memory and emotion leaving it as a clean slate on which he could implant new information. Aka: brainwashing. He placed his patients into drug-induced comas for months on end shocking them with 30-40 times the normal power of electroconvulsive charges.
Cameron had gotten the idea for these ghastly experiments following his involvement in the so-called Doctor’s Trials – the Nuremberg war crime tribunals for the Nazi doctors held following WWII.
Ironically, he was sent by the U.S. Army to sit in judgment of the medical crimes performed by the German doctors. Ironic, because as a secret operative for the OSS, Cameron himself was involved in scientific work during the war. We learned later that Dr. Cameron, along with British intelligence, was involved in the extensive interrogation of Nazi Rudolph Hess, who many felt was mentally incapacitated by his interrogators.
Cameron, fascinated by these techniques, decided to continue them upon his return to North America. Working at Albany State Medical School, Cameron carried out his heinous experiments just north of the border in Montreal to avoid U.S. law. For the record, this was not some rogue medical quack. This was not a college student like Josef Mengele had been at Frankfurt University. Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron was one of the most famous doctors in the world. He was President of the American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the President of the World Psychiatric Association.
We now know that Cameron’s experiments, from 1957 – 1964, were paid for by the CIA and later became part of Project MKULTRA, the CIA-directed mind control program. (In 2004, 77 of these victims received cash settlements from the government of Canada.) This led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual used throughout South and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to help repressive regimes implement the economic policies of the Chicago Boys. With the help of right wing ideologues like Bush advisor Elliot Abrams, (alleged torture tape destroyer) Jose Rodriguez Jr., the former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, and the British-born son of a Greek shipping tycoon named John Negroponte, listed on paper at the time as the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, the Central American regimes implemented the KUBARK program with ruthless efficiency.
In fact, many members of these regimes learned how to torture while enrolled at the School of the Americas located at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
Today, we find the pages of this program dog-eared in the torture facilities of Guantanamo Bay and other CIA black sites around the world.
The blunt reality is that the American government tortures in our name every single day all around the world. (The so-called good German may have a modern day counterpart in the Americal liberal.)
In Chile in 1973, the CIA and US economic interests combined to topple the democratically elected president Salvador Allende and help install General Augusto Pinochet. Milton Friedman and his capitalist cronies seized the opportunity to try out their economic theories on an actual country for the first time. But according to Friedman’s theories, the collective memories of Chile would first have to be wiped clean by physical and economic shock therapy. Repression, financially and socially, was harsh and heavy. It took Chile decades to recover.
Klein takes us off-road through Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, El Salvador and Nicaragua. All the techniques are the same. Just the names are different. Military takeover, repression, forced capitalism, more repression. The results are the same. Hyper inflation, massive reduction in social services, elimination of democracy, immense wealth for a tiny elite.
The shock doctrine is shown taking hold in Poland, South Africa and even China, the perfect host as their state repression is already in place.
Klein shows the repeated pattern of hollowing out governments, selling off its resources, cutting off social programs, enriching the rich, and then enforcing it all with guns.
The post-disaster versions of the shock doctrine are possibly the cruelest of all. Klein shows that money directed toward tsunami relief in Sri Lanka is redirected to the construction of luxury hotels for the tourist industry. Its victims, fisherman and their families, are forced inland to makeshift camps where they are left to survive without access to their generational livelihoods.
The collapse of the Soviet Union is examined through the lens of disaster capitalism. From Yeltsin to the rise of the oligarchs to the ascent of Putin, the end of the Soviet Union has never been that closely examined. Klein lays out the scenario of the feeding frenzy following the fall of the Wall with numbers to back it up. In 1998 Boris Yeltsin’s approval rating fell to 6%. As this drunken bear was impeached and stumbled repeatedly on television, he was continually propped up by political capitalists in the West (including Bill Clinton), who salivated over the industrial wealth of the former Soviet state machinery.
Over 2 billion dollars a month in Russian wealth was moved out of the country. Billion dollar companies were sold for millions. Yukos, the massive oil company with more oil than all of Kuwait, was sold for 300 million bucks. (It grossed 3 billion a year in revenue prior to the sale.) In 1989, there were 2 million Russians below the poverty line. By the mid-90s, there were 74 million. 3.5 million children were homeless. (There were none recorded under the Soviets.) From 1994-2004 drug use has gone up 900% and alcoholism has since doubled. In 1995, there were fifty thousand people who were HIV positive. In 2005, there were one million reported cases.
Like its former client state Iraq who suffered under Saddam, the media mantra was repeated. “You don’t want to go back to Stalin, do you?”
Indeed for many, the answer, while under their collective breath, was yes.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Jeffrey Sachs, the hot young economist, called for a Marshall Plan to help prevent that nation’s descent into chaos and fascism. None of those pleas were answered. In fact, Sachs was laughed at. “The IMF just stared me down like I was crazy,” he said.
It was explained to Sachs that the whole point of the Marshall Plan, the massive post war aid to rebuild Germany, was because of the Soviet Union. Now that it was dead, who the hell needs a Marshall Plan?
West Germany was set up as a model capitalist state to drive a stake into the heart of socialism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the floor model was no longer necessary. The showcase home was not needed to sell other homes. In other words, the competition was gone. Macy’s had driven Gimbels out of business.
As long as there was a Soviet Union, there was a Gimbels and Macy’s had to offer more to attract customers. As soon as the Soviet Union went under, Macy’s was the only department store left in the world so it didn’t have to offer massive sales any longer. Nor for that matter, did it have to offer benefits, pensions, job security or health insurance.
Without Gimbels, Macy’s didn’t have to kiss customer ass any longer.
Macy’s grew colder. Less hospitable. Lazier. More arrogant.
Macy’s became the embittered divorcee that now lives alone, sleeps late, doesn’t shave and drinks a lot.
If I get really rank with the clerk, I walk. What can the guy do at Gimbels? He can always reject me from that store. But I can always go to Macy’s. Communism is like one big phone company. If I get too rank with that phone company, where can I go? I’ll end up like a schmuck with a Dixie cup with a thread: ’Hello, hello, hellooooooo.’
Lenny Bruce, 1959
Wow, if Lenny were alive today. He’d drop dead.
(Some of you may be too young to remember how polite the phone company got when Ma Bell was finally broken up into Baby Bells and they had to compete for your financial affection?)
I have made the argument for years that many of the world’s current political ills have been caused by the immense power vacuum left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This vacuum has been metaphorically filled by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which for better or worse, was being repressively dealt with by the Soviets over the past fifty years. Afghanistan’s resistance changed all that. The ripples were felt all the way back to Moscow and surfing that wave was Osama bin Laden. Obviously, bin Laden is a minor military foe compared to the mighty Soviet Empire, but with the vacuum he’s the new Fidel.
See, its one thing to have a threatening enemy, but with the Soviet Union, it was also a threatening enemy economy. There is no Islamic militant economy, so they are merely a military threat. (And one without thousands of ballistic missiles for that matter.) This scenario while dangerous, is something that disaster capitalism can actually profit from.
Gimbels was a huge economic threat to Macy’s. They challenged Macy’s very existence as a department store. In the grand theme of things, the Islamic militants are merely the shoplifters.
What Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism, I have referred to in recent years as Darwinian capitalism. Without the Soviet Union, capitalism was suddenly free to lapse into its more savage form. The survival of the fittest economic system. It trickles down to the corporate workplace where the guy in the next cubicle is your enemy. It is he you have to overcome. He who stands in the way of your raise. Your promotion. Your kid’s college tuition. Your co-worker is your enemy under Darwinian capitalism. You must destroy him if you are to survive in the economic jungle.
Today, it is indeed the survival of the fittest.
As Michael Fleischer, Paul Bremer’s deputy stated when he addressed a group of Iraqi businessmen, “Will you be overwhelmed by foreign businesses? The answer depends on you. Only the best of you will survive.”
In the end, we need a new Soviet Union. Possibly the European Union can get muscular and help keep us in check.
Lord knows we need it.
Buy this book. Steal this book. Somehow get this book. Do whatever you have to do, but Read This Book.
It just might save the world.
A WGA screenwriter/producer/journalist based in Hollywood, California, Mark Groubert is the Senior Film and Book Reviewer for CrooksandLiars.com. As a filmmaker he has produced numerous documentaries for HBO. Groubert is also the former editor of National Lampoon Magazine, MTV Magazine and The Weekly World News. In addition, he currently writes for the L.A. Weekly, L.A. City Beat, Penthouse, High Times and other publications while on strike.
No Trackbacks To “C&L Book of the Month: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism“
[deleted–please consult the commenting policy]
For a more fair and balanced review to go amazon and publishers weekly..
A NEW? Soviet Union? huh?
That looks like an interesting book. I’ll have to check it out. However, no Soviet Union may be needed to act as a counter to the U.S. With the Bush Administration’s reckless spending and foreign policies they are pretty much giving away the U.S. at bargin basement prices as we see from some of these headlines:
Foreigners Buy Stakes in the U.S. at a Record Pace
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01.....ref=slogin
Under the downgrade shadow
“Rating firm Moody’s on January 10 signaled its belief that the long-term credit rating of US government debt might have to be cut - downgraded - below AAA.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/G.....7Dj02.html
Fabulous book!!!! Opened my eyes. Made 4 other people read it too.
What the hell was that? Somebody call an editor, stat!
Wonderful fabulous book. Brilliant analysis, completely captures the world we live in and the venal greed destroying it. Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus and yes there are plans to make a killing from disaster. Including remaking the world in the image of present day Iraq.
I finally understand why they are fighting against stopping global warming and climate change. The wreckage will belong to them, and they can use their money to avoid the actual storm and crisis. You won’t.
This stuff isn’t new to any well read, literate and educated person.
Obviously the great difficulty in marketing this book is finding people who can actually read, that can be pried away from x-box or my space long enough to at least look at the cover, or who have an attention span of anything more then one minute before getting fidgety.
It is a shame the important books are disregarded by the masses for the most part.
Big shame.
This book, if widely read, will be as important in our time as Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to the 19th century. It outlines a criminal conspiracy against humanity that is so vast it has only been eclipsed by the Holocaust. It is an indictment against the criminals that have manipulated the world for their own despicable purposes. This book should lead to a movement that will bring the crooks that have committed these crimes for justice. Everything that has happened on the world stage suddenly makes perfect sense when it looked at with a new pair of glasses.
THE best non-fiction book in the last decade at least! It is an important book because it explains how and why this predatory form of capitalism exists. Once you understand it only then can you identify it when it appears(like a social cancer) and then resist with all your might, unless of course you enjoy being controlled and owned by the corporate elite. I know, I know, you already are. The point is, it can get worse, much worse, unless you are one of the victims of Katrina, then you know, you really know.
Great book, explains much of the strange policy in our world today. I gave copies to all my college aged children, nieces and nephews recently as gifts. Decided to help the new generation become as resistant to shock as possible.
This is the worst (fill in the blank) since the Great Depression. We are ar the doorstep of the deflation end of the inflation/deflation cycle. Destruction of capital occurs.
Anecdotal stories of greed and corruption abound. A natural cycle is completing itself through whatever human folly we can conceive of. There was and is corruption in the stock market. But as long as people’s 401K’s are going up in value, let’s just party.
As long as people’s homes are escalating in value, let’s just party.
Corruption would be no big deal to anyone if stock prices or home prices or wages were only going up. But stocks went down. Homes went down. Wages went down.
The fall of the Wall equates to the end of WW1. A period of war inflation ended in both cases. A peace dividend of declining inflation- follwed by stock and property bubbles in both cases. The roaring 20’s and the roaring 90’s.
The details are different, but the cycle is the same.
The Osama economy may not exist, but the Soviet economy never offered anything of any value, either. I cannot remember buying anything made in Russia. But everyone has a house full of made in China.
The Chinese boom is deflationary in nature. China, producer to the world.
I wondered why OBL hit the world trade center and the pentagon. Now I know. Also read Naomi Wolf “The End of America” if you want a 1—2 punch of reality. Beginning to believe that the reason the Republicons go bat-poop over Hillary is because she understands international economics. It does not appear that any of their candidates can add 2&2 and get 4 every time.
http://www.flatustheelder.com
Great post, great book. Friedman et. al. are a black plague released on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, without a free press people in the United States will be the last to learn the truth.
I am so sick of Naomi Klein. I read her book. Her research is simply lacking and she making broad statements not supported by fact. No wonder she never debates anyone.
Naomi Klein: Shockingly Ignorant
Naomi Klein: Shockingly Ignorant Part 2
Naomi Klein: Shockingly Ignorant Part 3
Naomi Klein: Shockingly Ignorant Part 4, With Keith Olbermann
Milton Friedman Debates Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein: Shockingly Ignorant Part 6
Milton Friedman Debates Naomi Klein Part 2
Naomi Klein: Shockingly Ignorant Part 8
Naomi Klein is a Liar
These videos pretty much demonstrate how ignorant and hypocritical she is.
Test? I tried submitting comments before?
Site Monitor: The spam filter picks up your posts when you have more than five links in it.
Is C&L taking nominations for its Book of the Month?
If so, I’d like to nominate The Authoritarians by Robert Altemeyer, which is freely available as a downloadable PDF file at www.theauthoritarians.com. You can also buy a hardcopy at lulu.com.
In short, the books summarizes the author’s 40+ years of research into the right wing authoritarian (RWA) personality. RWAs are those who score in the top 25% of the RWA scale (i.e., a survey). Here’s how the author describes them.
Sound like any political group you may have heard of?
It’s a fascinating read. Unfortunately, it is not as widely known as it should be, probably because it is not being distributed in the conventional way. Which is all the more reason for C&L to make it its Book of the Month.
Great book. And for those who don’t want to wade through all 5oo plus pages (but it’s worth the effort), can just read the intro and chapter one to get enough to appreciate the validity of the book’s thesis.
Wow. That was weird. I couldn’t submit anything for a second. Sorry about that.
See Milton Friedman Debate Naomi Klein.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2kTy7glZ9s
L.A. Confidential @ 7:
LA Confidential, you are the reason why people hate liberals. What a prick.
This next video demonstrates how Naomi Klein takes Friedman’s statements out of context to create her theory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVUFyEY3gmo
The following books have greatly shaped my outlook on why America’s and the world’s economies do what they do and what must be done for the future:
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman
The Squandering of America by Rober Kuttner
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
The Big Con by Jonathan Chait
Collapse by Jared Diamond
The Great Risk Shift by Jacob Hacker
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery
Screwed by Thom Hartmann
Also, (2) books on my future reading list and seem interesting:
Falling Behind: How the Rising Income Inequality Hurts the Middle Class by Robert Frank
Myths of Free Trade by Sen. Sherod Brown
Read and Enjoy the Enlightenment.
sundog @ 21:
This One book destroys them all.
Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy:by Thomas Sowell.
Devil’s Advocate @ 22:
“Thomas Sowell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930), is an American economist, political writer, and commentator. While often described as a “black conservative”, he prefers not to be labeled, and considers himself more libertarian than conservative.[1] He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.”
I think the Hoover Institution and the AEI are retirement homes for the “Chicago Boys.” Sorry Devil’s, but the numbers don’t lie. America is slipping and institutions like these are a main reason for it. Time for better ideas from the reality based world.
I read the book in its entirety. The footnotes were often taken out of context, especially Friedman’s involvement in Chile. Klein completely ignores immigration rates, poverty rates, inflation rates, unemployment rates, rates of famine, and even genocide rates.
The saddest thing with Klein’s book, other than not being substantiated is that she thinks the world stared in 1970. Her lack of understanding of basic economics and history make her someone that should not be taken seriously.
If you want to see some comedy. Watch Klein act like a blatant hypocrite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AZ6XeTxUQw
A quibble.
Darwinian capitalism? Honestly, I hate that name. It takes what Darwin actually was, a natural philosopher, and changes him into something that he isn’t. It also changes the idea of evolution is too, which isn’t survival of the fittest.
I prefer Klein’s name for it. Leave Darwin alone.
sundog @ 23:
The fact that you just pulled a paragraph from Wiki to substantiate an argument demonstrates you are someone who should not be taken seriously. Either you read the book and get back to me or make a substantive argument why I am wrong. Cutting and pasting is not engaging in debate.
Devil’s Advocate @ 26:
That’s funny, cut and paste works on my Mac. You ought to give it a try. Besides Devil’s, my post is for all C&L’s readers, not just for single concept Libertarians.
I thought game theorists had already destroyed the notion that unwavering self interest was a viable way to play the game of life. The prisoner’s dilemma anyone? What about all the research done by people like Steven Pinker about altruism and greed? Milton Friedman was the one who was fundamentally wrong, and more and more research is proving that. His sophistry has done horrible damage to this world, and I wish his ideas had died with him.
Nice choice for a book! I’m glad that it’s not some book about how we need to just fiddle around with this or that minor fiscal policy. It’s a book that actually names the system that is at the fundamental root of the problem(s).
A serious, challenging, thoughtful work.
Phillipidies @ 29:
Evidently you don’t understand how the Prisoner’s dilemma factors into basic economics. The Prisoner’s dilemma does nothing to disprove anything that Friedman ever said.