There is a new book out by Neomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It is rare indeed for a book like this to be written in such an elegant and sensitive way. But then there has never been a book quite like this. Her critique of capitalism and free-markets is unique, yet one senses her reserve and this makes The Shock Doctrine all the more credible. She unpacks the underlying philosophies and sick motivations of capitalism in a way that only a Neomi Klein could. (thankyou computer for not working and italicizing everything) This is one of a handful of the most important books in the social sciences written in the last 100 years.
It was a misinterpretation of communist theory—and a particular authoritarian strain—that led to the perversions of Stalin, Mao and Cestaclou, she writes. In the same way, it is the perversion of a particularly virulent form of capitalism, she writes, which has produced the Bush nightmare. Is the ideology blameless? Is the ideology to blame for Bush and Reagan’s torture gulags in the United States, Latin America and elsewhere? That is the logic we apply to communism, and rightly, she says. Any change is a change in topic. These are radical questions, like the one’s asked by Colorado Professor Ward Churchhill in his book The Justice of Roosting Chickens that produced a hysterical response from television pundits. Ward Churchhill asked if the people who died in the Twin Towers were “innocent victims” when they, in fact, participated in a national security state which was waging genocide on Latin America and elsewhere (in another book by Churchhill called A Little Matter of Genocide, he compared the U.S. run death camps in Central America and Asia to the toll wrought on the Jews by the Nazis, which, he said, wasn’t unique). Churchhill said that the pencil pushers of the military industrial complex within the twin towers, who worked in the offices of the FBI, CIA and NSA, should be seen as equivelent to the Nazis who were hung at Nuremberg and not “innocent victims”. Neomi Klein asks similar radical questions never asked before. She quotes an Argentine novelist who says, “Any change is a change in topic.” Is the capitalist ideology blameless when it produces and encourages widespread use of economic shock therapy as well as less metaphorical shock therapy? The whole book is an answer to these questions posed in her introduction. She concludes that capitalism is very dangerous and needs to be recognized as a dangerous ideology in the same way that communism is forever tarnished by the abuse of particular authoritarian strains of it.
It is not Utopian. For example, while suggesting that substantial portions of countries’ economies be turned over to the state, along with massively increased social spending, she rejects the binary argument of capitalism against communism as too simple. She doesn’t reject all capitalism, but only particular strains of it—the Milton Freedman variety. She suggests that small business can actually prosper better in a culture with increase regulation of the economy by the state (she suggests making oil companies, education and medicine public as well as charging high tariffs for imported goods) and gives the example of South America after world war two. She says that Peronist Argentina and Uruguay exhibited this economic equilibrium. Peron charged high tariffs for imported goods and Uruguay instituted healthcare and education for all. Her book has even been criticised by the left as being too Kenseyen, as opposed to all out socialist/communist. The Shock Doctrine refutes the idea that socialist systems are utopian and not practical. One thing is certain: it is impossible for anyone to view capitalism in the same way after reading this Canadian journalists’ latest work.
Some of it is very hard truths and, if you are like me, you will want to skip over all the gory descriptions of how Americans torture opponents of capitalism. I don’t want that energy in my mind, although it is good that she puts it out in the public record because most Americans are very good people and would be shocked to learn just how widespread is the use of electric torture in the American political prisons for the last 57 years and increasingly so as now it has been formally legalized by Congress. And until it these torturous methods are generally known they will continue.
Most Americans aren’t even aware that we have political prisons. Torture with electric shocks, stress positions and sensory deprivation are the special development of the CIA. She says these CIA pioneered methods need to be acknowledged by the social sciences as an advancement in the art of killing people since the 18th century. The CIA brought together psychologists and experiments and found something even worse than crucifixion or the inquisition. If you doubt, just look at what Guantanamo has turned into. A majority of prisoners have now all gone insane, become unable to speak, incontinent, screaming childish babble and rolling around on the floor sucking their thumbs. But I’m not going into details and prefer skipping over those parts. She makes the point, stunning, that we consider the crimes of communism to be part of the ideology and we, rightly, consider the ideology to blame. Why not apply the same logic to capitalism. Is the ideology blameless when it produces American gulags throughout the world and where opponents of capitalism are shocked again and again and again. She is so well-expressed!!! It is basically a book about economics. It is a stunning unpacking of free-trade, freemarkets and globalism. She is in the forefront of left-wing thought today but doesn’t have the blindsided and doctrinaire qualities that characterize so many who write for magazines like The Nation or newspapers like The Guardian. With one exception. Only in one area is she short sighted, and that germane to her topic, disaster capitalism. She has consistently been one to characterize the idea that the Bush regime planned 9/11 as a conspiracy theory and so chooses not to address it. Even so, her book stands, maybe even the better, for leaving out this information. Even with an understanding of 9/11, what is happening now needs to be seen as following what happened earlier, rather than a departure. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism should inform the social sciences on this issue for the next one hundred years. There has been no book to date which chronicles the abuses of capitalism in quite the same way by giving the history and philosophy of this particular strain of free-market perversion (the Milton Freedman Chicago school of economics capitalism with the gloves off strain).
All the time in the media we are told that democracy and markets are the wave of the future and socialism isn’t viable. The Shock Doctrine is the antidote and should be checked out at libraries and local bookstores if just for the introduction.
Neomi Klein will soon be in Portland to speak and sign books.
December 7, 2007
7:00pm First Unitarian Church1011 SW 12th AvenuePortland, OR
(503) 228-6389
