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A review by books_ergo_sum
The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism by George Monbiot, Peter Hutchison
reflective
5.0
This was great! I appreciated:
- how concise this was (224 pages)
- the 2024 publication date (the recent stats are pretty damning—don’t love that the top 10 richest dudes have all doubled their wealth in the last 4 years meanwhile hundreds of millions more people have been pushed below the poverty line)
- how thorough this was (we go all the way back to the 1400s)
- that this was one of those unicorn books:
just as enjoyable if you know lots about this topic as it would be to read if you know nothing about this topic
- how idea-synthesizing this was (we talked about Naomi Klein, Thomas Piketty, even Robert Putnam, and tons more)
This little book plugged into so many things that have been simmering in my mind…
- how privatization of public services turns those services into something the public “rents”… and how that is transforming capitalism into some kind of neo-feudalism (like Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis)
- the slow breakdown of the “escapist” mentality the wealthy have about climate change… linked to Slavoj Žižek’s idea of Safari Subjectivity in Too Late to Awaken
- even an emphasis on narrative, which I can’t stop thinking about since reading Recognizing the Stranger by Isabella Hammad
And then—on top of all that—the audiobook was just excellent. It felt like a David Attenborough nature documentary. The flow of the narration, the building idea, the lucid examples, the sharply drawn conclusions. And then when I googled who the co-author Peter Hutchison was—he’s a filmmaker, director, and documentary writer. Yup, that tracked. I think his scriptwriting expertise made this a great audiobook listening experience.
- how concise this was (224 pages)
- the 2024 publication date (the recent stats are pretty damning—don’t love that the top 10 richest dudes have all doubled their wealth in the last 4 years meanwhile hundreds of millions more people have been pushed below the poverty line)
- how thorough this was (we go all the way back to the 1400s)
- that this was one of those unicorn books:
just as enjoyable if you know lots about this topic as it would be to read if you know nothing about this topic
- how idea-synthesizing this was (we talked about Naomi Klein, Thomas Piketty, even Robert Putnam, and tons more)
This little book plugged into so many things that have been simmering in my mind…
- how privatization of public services turns those services into something the public “rents”… and how that is transforming capitalism into some kind of neo-feudalism (like Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis)
- the slow breakdown of the “escapist” mentality the wealthy have about climate change… linked to Slavoj Žižek’s idea of Safari Subjectivity in Too Late to Awaken
- even an emphasis on narrative, which I can’t stop thinking about since reading Recognizing the Stranger by Isabella Hammad
And then—on top of all that—the audiobook was just excellent. It felt like a David Attenborough nature documentary. The flow of the narration, the building idea, the lucid examples, the sharply drawn conclusions. And then when I googled who the co-author Peter Hutchison was—he’s a filmmaker, director, and documentary writer. Yup, that tracked. I think his scriptwriting expertise made this a great audiobook listening experience.