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A review by gadicohen93
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
4.0
Just turned the last page like fifteen minutes ago, and promptly realized that this book gave me a lot of information to swallow. Thankfully, because of Klein's powerfully simple thesis, if I were ever to embroil myself in an alcohol-tinged dinner party conversation about the recent history/politics/economics of any of the countries mentioned in this book (aka Chile, Bolivia, the UK, Russia, South Africa, Poland, the Asian Tigers, China, Iraq, South Asia, Israel and America, in different periods ranging from early 70s to 2007), I would probably manage just fine.
The philosophy that Milton Friedman and his economics department at UChicago constructed, and that the IMF, World Bank, Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, etc. advanced throughout the world on behalf of corporate interests, made the world less democratic, both politically and economically. "The shock doctrine" is a revealing coinage, because it explains a tenet of this philosophy--the need to shock a population, either politically, militarily, economically, ecologically, into accepting complete, unbounded free enterprise (open up borders to multinational exploitation of economies, privatization of all sectors of the economy, remove price controls on goods--things that people wouldn't support democratically)--in quite literal terms.
It's kind of amazing that Klein managed to take all of these countries, in all of their separate recent conflicts, and tie them to this one man and his devastating ideology. It's amazing because it's totally convincing. Klein's thesis reaches so deeply into the past four decades of history that it's just so impressive and fascinating how she manages to support it so convincingly.
Some things I didn't like:
She overused the torture/shock metaphor. It was a powerful parallel, and it worked, but it was also not elegant enough for her to turn it into a major, repeated part of her thesis. I also thought that the writing could get dry at parts, just because of the overwhelming amount of information and repetition.
Overall, though, this book was a triumph. I took a class called "Globalization and Social Conflict" last semester, taught by a professor who was supposed to be incredible, but this book taught me more about the problems that arose from the ideology of globalization than those four months with Patrick Heller. So thank you, Noami Klein.
The philosophy that Milton Friedman and his economics department at UChicago constructed, and that the IMF, World Bank, Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, etc. advanced throughout the world on behalf of corporate interests, made the world less democratic, both politically and economically. "The shock doctrine" is a revealing coinage, because it explains a tenet of this philosophy--the need to shock a population, either politically, militarily, economically, ecologically, into accepting complete, unbounded free enterprise (open up borders to multinational exploitation of economies, privatization of all sectors of the economy, remove price controls on goods--things that people wouldn't support democratically)--in quite literal terms.
It's kind of amazing that Klein managed to take all of these countries, in all of their separate recent conflicts, and tie them to this one man and his devastating ideology. It's amazing because it's totally convincing. Klein's thesis reaches so deeply into the past four decades of history that it's just so impressive and fascinating how she manages to support it so convincingly.
Some things I didn't like:
She overused the torture/shock metaphor. It was a powerful parallel, and it worked, but it was also not elegant enough for her to turn it into a major, repeated part of her thesis. I also thought that the writing could get dry at parts, just because of the overwhelming amount of information and repetition.
Overall, though, this book was a triumph. I took a class called "Globalization and Social Conflict" last semester, taught by a professor who was supposed to be incredible, but this book taught me more about the problems that arose from the ideology of globalization than those four months with Patrick Heller. So thank you, Noami Klein.