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Felix
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Rhyd Wildermuth's
review of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism:
"I just finished The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein. It came out months ago, and I would’ve read it sooner had it not cost $45 dollars in Canada.
Much of the information meticulously detailed in the book was alr...more
I just finished The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein. It came out months ago, and I would’ve read it sooner had it not cost $45 dollars in Canada.
Much of the information meticulously detailed in the book was already available in Harper’s Magazine and DemocracyNow!, though never put together so throroughly. She begins her book with a discussion of a canadian woman who endured several years of experimental psychiatric work under the authority of David Cameron, working in a Canadian Hospital under contract with both the American CIA and the Canadian Defense Department to discover the ways in which the human mind breaks down under electro-shock, regression, and general mind-fucking (lightless cells, limited outside contact, meals served at odd times--oatmeal for dinner, soup for breakfast, all announced as appropriate to the time of day to disorient the patient). She checked in for anxiety--discharged with memory loss, incontinence, and regression to a toddler-mind-set.
Most of these experiments were part of MKUltra (most well-known for the use of LSD, less well-known as the foundation for all present "interrogation" tactics in the War on/of Terror). The tactics show up again in every country where the US has, in some manner, been involved in training police or military people to combat first communism, than leftism (See: Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Columbia, Mexico).
She ties this, both metaphorically and literally, to the Chicago School (the group of economists and theorists, taught by Milton Friedman, who believe in the "free-market" as the only scientific/natural system for human trade/relations). Friedman believed that the free-er a market is (no government regulations, no consumer protections, no corporate taxes), the more-free the people in that market will be: Democracy and Self-Rule are synonymous, then, with limitless profit-taking, no minimum wage, no state-services, etc.
But there was a problem, one that he himself admitted. Time after time, people kept demanding from their governments, or forming their own, that there be a minimum wage, there be an 8-hour work-day, that water be cheap or free, that electricity and infrastructure be state- or people-run. Democracy kept tending towards "mixed-economies" (state or community controlled electricity, oil, water, schools, etc., as well as worker-protections and land re-distribution and more numerous small-businesses, rather than corporate conglomerates). So, then, what to do?
Milton found an effective answer: Shock the fuck out of them. Already we knew that pain, applied correctly, will disorient people. Disoriented people don’t fight back, nor can they even quite understand what’s happening around them until they regain their footing.
At least 4/5ths of the book are devoted to the history of "shocking" local and national movements into disorientation. Some of the shocks were manufactured (violent coups, international currency manipulation), some were hijacked revolutions (South Africa, Russia, Poland), and some were natural disasters (the Tsunami a few years back, New Orleans), but with always the same result: foreign companies buy up everything in sight, plunging already impoverished and disoriented people into further pain and poverty.
? Chile: Salvador Allende, democratically elected to be President of Chile, was assassinated by a US-supported coup by Augusto Pinochet on Sept 11, 1973. Pinochet’s economic advisors were all from the Chicago School, and when he came to power, he began selling off national resources (the mines, the banks, the infrastructure) to foreign companies. To take care of the pesky problem of people fighting back, he (with CIA trained soldiers) arrested and tortured thousands of "enemies of the state," stealing children from prisoners and adopting them out to supporters of the coup.
? Argentina and Uruguay: Similar situation. Some highlights included burning universities (and killing professors), destroying copies of books by Marx and Neruda. Ford Motor Company took out adverts in Argentinian newspapers to support the coup, ("Ford commits itself to the struggle to bring about the great destiny of the Fatherland.")--they were quite happy with the end of unions in their factories (many union leaders were actually tortured in the factories themselves).
? Poland: I’m old enough to remember the strikes in Poland by Solidarity (a workers’ union led by Lech Walesa), but it isn’t surprising I didn’t actually know what they stood for. I assumed, just as the media suggested, that all those polish workers were striking for democracy and capitalism. Wrong. Their platform was "Socialism--yes; Corruptions of Socialism--no": they wanted worker-control of the state-run factories and businesses, not a free-market economy. But when they won, no government would forgive the former communist state’s debts, and they had no money. Enter Jeffrey Sachs (Bono calls him "my professor"), who offered a massive infusion of international cash with a slight catch (a do-or-die proposition, actually): take the money and privatise everything, or don’t take the money and have your new people’s government topple. Lech Walesa took the first (and faced massive revolt from the supporters of Solidarity, losing the next election to a proto-fascist party who promised to kick out Jeffery Sach’s and the IMF/World Bank but instead started expelling immigrants, arresting gays, etc.)
? South Africa: The African National Congress (Mandela, etc.) ended Apartheid with promises to re-distribute land, give ownership of the gold mines and other resources to workers. But just as they were negotiating their relatively bloodless coup, the white south-african government negotiated economic policies with the IMF and World Bank ensuring that such a thing would never happen. When the ANC came to power, they suddenly found that there was no money to even turn on the electricity in the black ghettos, because almost all of their budget had to go towards paying down international loans the white government had taken out (and taken with them) when they lost power.
? Sri Lanka: Images of the tsunami that destroyed thousands of shanties on the beaches led millions of people to give money to the relief effort. But much of that money was channeled into the tourism industry. If you gave money, there’s a damn good possibility you helped re-build a surfer-hotel. Indigenous fishers aren’t allowed on the beaches anymore ("for safety,") while hotels got a lot more beachfront to build on (they’re exempt from the 200-meter buffer zone).
? Iraq: Another created shock (it was called Shock and Awe, remember?). Paul Bremer (the viceroy of Iraq’s "provisional" government) sold off every Saddam-era industry he could find, barring Iraqis from buying them. The "de-baathification" (barring Baath-party members from jobs) didn’t affect many of the high-level party leaders (former generals were appointed to mayorships by Bremer) but did keep thousands of teachers, doctors, professors, and soldiers from working. The opposition to the oil-law is depicted in the media as an ethnic squabble, though every group agrees--they want no foreign companies owning their oil. That, however, is not an option the US will tolerate. Oh, and remember the purple fingers? Iraq had already held elections (spurred on by Bush’s declaration that he was bringing democracy to Iraq). Those elections were annuled (sometimes violently) because the US wanted to pick the candidates. Wonder why there wasn’t sectarian violence until Paul Bremer started passing laws? Look at the laws he passed.
? New Orleans: A natural shock turned into the perfect laboratory for free-market ideals. Schools were privatised, hospitals closed permanently. Neighbourhoods that had already begun rebuilding were bulldozed to make room for private developments. Reconstruction companies (including Bechtel and Halliburton) refused to hire locals, can’t account for most of the money we gave them, and in many cases brought in immigrants from Mexico and didn’t pay them after they did the work.
This is all, of course, a very short summary. 466 pages of indictments over one of the most absurd games that has ever been played (and one that we didn’t get dealt any cards for, and we’re not even certain why we’re sitting in the casino)--Capitalism is not a natural system, is not the same thing as Democracy, and doesn’t make everyone’s life better. Why the think-tanks and the Freidmanites, why Jeffery Sachs and Bono and Ayn Rand and all their ilk are given prominate discussion places within newpapers, radio and television without once having to answer for the immense suffering their policies have caused while a bunch of black folk watching their jobs and homes destroyed are just being "lazy," why Morales and Chavez and Correa in South America are all dangerous dictators to be overthrown and the people who vote from them, who know intimately the history of the American Alternative (torture, poverty, drug wars) are dangerously misled----all of this is to keep us complicit in Capitalism’s war against people’s movements everywhere. ...less
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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
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