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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein

4.23 · Rating details · 33,853 ratings · 2,478 reviews

In her ground-breaking reporting from Iraq, Naomi Klein exposed how the trauma of invasion was being exploited to remake the country in the interest of foreign corporations. She called it "disaster capitalism." Covering Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were ...more

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Hardcover, 558 pages

Published September 18th 2007 by Metropolitan Books (first published September 18th 2006)

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May 25, 2008 Trevor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics, work, social-theory

There is a part of me that would like to make this review a bit funny. This is a deeply disturbing book. I’ve a preference for humour as a means of confronting the deeply disturbing. But I can’t bring myself to say anything remotely funny about this book.

Klein compares some psychological experiments (torture by any reasonable definition of the word) carried out in the 1950s in Canada (funded by the CIA off US soil so they could plausibly deny they were researching torture) in which p There is a part of me that would like to make this review a bit funny. This is a deeply disturbing book. I’ve a preference for humour as a means of confronting the deeply disturbing. But I can’t bring myself to say anything remotely funny about this book.

Klein compares some psychological experiments (torture by any reasonable definition of the word) carried out in the 1950s in Canada (funded by the CIA off US soil so they could plausibly deny they were researching torture) in which patients were blasted back to virtually a blank slate by sensory depravation and electric shock treatment to US foreign policy in countries such as Chile in the 1970s and Iraq today.

If you had forgotten just how evil unconstrained capitalism is – it is time to read this book. If you are concerned that the world seems to believe democracy = free markets – it is time to read this book.

For two decades it has been abundantly clear that the greatest danger facing the world is the ideology that likes to call itself Economic Rationalism but is better described as Radical Free Market Economics. This is the view that any restraint placed on the free operation of the market – from fixing minimum wages to environmental standards to health and safety controls in the workplace – are by definition wrong and counterproductive. This view states that governments are, by definition, wasteful and unnecessary. This view is an attempt at justifying unmitigated greed as if it was a universal good. It is about destroying all vestiges of democracy (and God knows those vestiges are today meagre indeed) in our society and handing over all power to corporations. If you are not troubled by the shift in power in the world away from governments elected by the people, for the people to corporations created out of greed for greed – then you really need to turn off American Idol and start looking around yourself.

Klein takes a series of increasingly distressing ‘case studies’ in which ever purer forms of radical free market economics are applied in times of crisis across the world – invariably with devastatingly negative results, invariably the opposite of what is predicted by the neo-liberals. She points out that without a crisis such as 9/11 or Katrina or the War in Iraq – such policies would never be allowed to be implemented. But come a crisis people are so shocked by what has just happened to them that they are prepared to forgo their democratic rights so things can be ‘fixed’.

The problem is that these bastards don’t want anything fixed. They want to apply more shocks, because that is the only way they can get rid of democratic structures that stand in the way of them handing over the wealth of our nations to themselves. The Corporate raping of Iraq as depicted in this book is only slightly less shocking than the Corporate raping of New Orleans. Perhaps I found the stuff about New Orleans more shocking because it was Americans doing this sort of thing to their own people. I know, I’m naïve.

The descriptions of torture in the book are too much to take. I’ve never been able to distance myself enough from the victims of torture to be objective about it. I believe it is the core of the democratic spirit – the notion that the sufferers of torture are our brothers and sisters and the perpetrators of torture require justice to be enacted against them – that immediately has me siding with the tortured. We have a moral responsibility to stop our government from using our tax dollars to torture people. If morality means anything at all – this is the minimum it can mean.

Klein documents that the torture used throughout the world by US client states has a long history going back to experiments done in the 1950s in Canada and have clearly become part of US foreign policy. If we are to be on the side of democracy then we must force our governments to stop using torture against the citizens of other countries. Particularly when these citizens are asking for what should be granted to them immediately – the right to reclaim the benefit of their own natural resources from foreign owned corporations.

There are so many lessons in this book, but the major one is that if people stand up against these greedy lunatics then we can stop them. We can reclaim our dignity and redistribute some of what has plundered from us. The criminal waste of tax dollars by these corporations in both Iraq and New Orleans is almost beyond description. In the book Iraq is at one point referred to as the Free Fraud Zone.

The world we live in today is increasingly becoming divided between those who have and are kept secure behind walled suburbs and those who have not and are forced to live without the basic necessities of life. We need to understand that my security is enhanced by making the world safer for you. That life isn’t about who ends up with the most stuff they don’t need or the biggest bank account or the fastest car, but that we are social animals and so what is good for all is also what is good for us.

As I said, this is a deeply disturbing book – but also an incredibly important one.
...more

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Oct 08, 2007 Bill Kerwin rated it really liked it

Using shock treatment as a metaphor, Klein analyzes the importance of economic dislocations and disasters to the success of Milton Friedman's free market philosophy. This is an important book, and shows why the apparent stupidities of the Bush administration in Iraq and Katrina are actually deliberate measures designed to daze and demoralize people into accepting a radical free-market agenda.

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Mar 01, 2008 James rated it it was amazing

“The lucky get Kevlar, the rest get prayer beads.”

This is a chilling, writhing outrage of a book. A hideous, squealing beast of a book that cannot and should not be ignored.

Klein has dropped the curtain on an ugly, malevolent Wizard. When these kind of curtains drop, we never like what we see. Like so many of these kinds of leftist exposes on conservatives, the Bush Administration, the neocons and their rabble, this book needn’t have been written. Orwell wrote it already. ...more

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Sep 28, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics, nonfiction, brain-candy, all-time-favorites-non-fiction, favorites

This was a very illuminating work about how chaotic situations are used, and sometimes created, as cover for the imposition of drastic economic and political reorganization in vulnerable economies. The end product of these actions is a so-called free market model as advocated by the Chicago School of Milton Friedman and his acolytes. Examples used include Chile, China, Argentina, Bolivia, South Africa, Russia, among others. The technique is for western financial powers to swoop in during a time
This was a very illuminating work about how chaotic situations are used, and sometimes created, as cover for the imposition of drastic economic and political reorganization in vulnerable economies. The end product of these actions is a so-called free market model as advocated by the Chicago School of Milton Friedman and his acolytes. Examples used include Chile, China, Argentina, Bolivia, South Africa, Russia, among others. The technique is for western financial powers to swoop in during a time of financial crisis and refuse to lend a struggling nation any money until that nation agrees to a radical reworking of its economy. This reworking is done in a shock, with many changes instituted all at once, with little or no warning. These changes, as they are draconian toward the lower classes, usually need to be accompanied by severe political repression in order to enforce the transition. What we see here is the mechanism of a growing form of corporatist colonialism.

Klein parallels her examination of the stresses endured by many national economies with a look at actual, literal, personal shock treatment. In the 1950s a researcher named Ewan Cameron did research on his theory that instead of Freudian therapy a more effective method of treating mental illness was to erase the patient’s personality using electric shocks. Then the blank page would be receptive to reconstruction by the good doctor. The shocks caused amnesia and extreme regression. Cameron devised a new tool, one that applied six shocks at once, and even used a wide range of drugs to disorient and wipe clean as much of the patient’s personality as possible. Once the subject was reduced to a vegetative state, Cameron played them tapes dozens, maybe hundreds of times over. The CIA took note and launched a program of its own.

She posits a parallel between treatments that serve to erase personality with the economic and political shocks that struggling nations are forced to endure, shocks that are part and parcel of the move from a developmentalist economy, one that seeks local control and self-sufficiency, to a globalist economy, one in which foreign investment in and ownership of local enterprise is encouraged.

While I found that at times Klein extended her discourse beyond the reach of her material, her analysis of the subject matter is compelling, her linkage of different forms of shock (personal, political, economic) illuminating, and the applicability of her work to the current economic disruptions frightening. Despite its subject matter, this a compelling, and relatively fast read. It should be mandatory reading for anyone concerned with politics, economics, world affairs or current events.

=============================EXTRA STUFF

August 4, 2011 - the following article has particular relevance not only for the international implementation of TSD, but to its application within the USA. It is an interview with Dr. Michael Hudson, a guy who has been ahead of the curve for a long time on the roots of current economic atrocities.

June 18, 2012 - Joe Nocera's NY Times column on how ALEC-based programs are gutting democracy in Rhode Island
...more

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Jun 15, 2008 David Gross rated it it was ok

Shelves: political-theory

I only got about into this. I don't like the shifty way Klein argues her points. I felt like I was being propagandized rather than educated.

Much of her main “shock doctrine” argument seems to be just sort of a tightly-woven set of linguistic parallels that are meant to suggest causation. Something like: Hitler had the autobahn built. The autobahn allowed drivers to finally race where they wanted to go. Hitler crafted what he thought of as the final solution to a race problem. So you see, highway ...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Riku Sayuj rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: economics, sociology-institutions, pop-eco

"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
~ Mao

I read it once, and I couldn't believe it.

I tried reading it again and I believe it even less.

I want to, honestly. And I feel as strongly as the author that The Shock Doctrine is changing the world. But it runs in the face of all economics I have been taught and I find myself scorning and muttering 'alarmist' to some of the more provocative paragraphs.

Thesis: The history of the contemporary fr ...more

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Oct 08, 2007 Evan rated it liked it

Recommends it for: any intelligent person who has read Thomas Friedman

This is an ambitious book. It tries to tie the economic politics of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia (in the 1970s), Russia, Poland, China, South Africa (in the 1980s and early nineties), the war in Iraq, the tsunami, and hurricane Katrina into a unified theory. Obviously, certain investigative and interpretive biases are required to make this work. Third world nationalism and developmentalism, in general, get off pretty easy in Klein's analysis. As a specialist in Indonesia, I found her portrayal of t This is an ambitious book. It tries to tie the economic politics of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia (in the 1970s), Russia, Poland, China, South Africa (in the 1980s and early nineties), the war in Iraq, the tsunami, and hurricane Katrina into a unified theory. Obviously, certain investigative and interpretive biases are required to make this work. Third world nationalism and developmentalism, in general, get off pretty easy in Klein's analysis. As a specialist in Indonesia, I found her portrayal of the Suharto regime as a betrayal of the somehow more viable Sukarno regime a bit evasive (let us not foget that Sukarno was also an ideologue who ran the nation's economy into the ground in the name of fighting neo-colonialism). Making me wonder just how she'd cooked the books in analyzing numerous other countries whose histories I don't know so well.

That said, it offers a very provocative perspective tying together some of the most significant events of the past quarter century.

The thesis, simply put, is that the economic theory championed by Milton Friedman and his Chicago School, first play-tested in the third world in the 1970s, has increasingly come home to roost in the West and Bush's America. The gist of the theory, according to Klein, is a total rejection of Keynesian economics (i.e. the New Deal approach to combatting recession through government spending). In contrast, the three guiding principles of the Chicago School are: deregulation, privatization and cutbacks. (Sound familiar yet?) Transferriing as much of the public sector as possible to the private sector, eliminating government regulations of business, cutting back on services, protections and other economic benefits to the workforce.

The problem, as Friedman and his disciples realized early on, is that voting citizens don't actually want any of this, and will not vote for neoliberal policies through any normal, free democratic process. The solution? Make democracy abnormal. Through shock and awe. Wait for (or instigate) a state of crisis and emergency (i.e. war, natural disaster, mass torture, revolution) and then implement neoliberal policies outside (or, in many cases, in direct contradiction to) democratic will. However, as we have discovered most recently in Iraq, such tactics don't tend to "settle down" into widespread prosperity for ordinary people. Rather, neoliberal governments find that if they let democracy operate normally again, they lose power. Which is why the United States ended up supporting so many dictators. In the name of spreading free market democracy.

There are some sharp notions in this book. I'm particularly taken with Klein's generalization of "Red Zone/Green Zone" to talk about zones of normalcy and nightmare created by neoliberal policies from Iraq to post-tsunami Sri Lanka to New Orleans. She also offers a persuasive refutation of the claim that we (the US) did the Marshall Plan in Europe, but when we tried it in Iraq, Arab Muslims just couldn't handle it. Rather, while the Marshall Plan was rooted in Keynesian economics (we rebuilt Europe's governments and public infrastructure), reconstruction in Iraq has been an "anti-Marshall plan," dismantling the Iraqi state and contracting all its functions to US corporations.

The REAL problem of this book is how to present arguments like these to anyone who doesn't already concsider themselves anti-globalization liberals. I think that any intelligent person who has read Thomas Friedman and found his arguments somewhat persuasive, should read this book too, and decide what sounds most persuasive for themselves. Unfortunately, I think most people will look at the jacket cover endorsements from Howard Zinn, Studs Terkel et. al. and make a snap call for the usual ideological reasons.

THAT is not good for America. ...more

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Oct 05, 2014 Joseph Spuckler rated it it was amazing

Shelves: political-science, history

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is the story of where and how capitalism is evolving in our society. I first heard Klein last week as a guest on Bill Mahr’s Real Time and I was pretty intrigued. I followed that up with watching her TED Talk and a trip to my local library. Klein is a writer, journalist, and film maker. She writes a syndicated column for The Nation and The Guardian, and covered the Iraq war for Harper’s. Her first book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is on my short list. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein is the story of where and how capitalism is evolving in our society. I first heard Klein last week as a guest on Bill Mahr’s Real Time and I was pretty intrigued. I followed that up with watching her TED Talk and a trip to my local library. Klein is a writer, journalist, and film maker. She writes a syndicated column for The Nation and The Guardian, and covered the Iraq war for Harper’s. Her first book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is on my short list.

People often ask me why do I read so much non-fiction when other concentrate their focus on fiction. Sometimes nonfiction can be as terrifying as a Stephen King novel. Sometimes it can be as disturbing as the best dystopian novels. Most of all it is real and is really happening. Klein captures this reality in The Shock Doctrine.

Shock therapy was once thought to clear the brain of the learned bad behaviors leaving a fresh slate to work with or a “cure.” Shock therapy was also tested to extract information government agencies wanted. This process has advanced to sensory deprivation followed by very loud noises and bright and flashing lights. The idea is to disorientate and wear down the prisoner. This works. With the idea that shocking a person into submissiveness works, can the same be idea be applied to a nation? Can a nation be shocked into changing ways and can the people be convinced that the new ways are the right ways?

The driving force in Shock Doctrine is Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. Fredman is a capitalist in the fullest sense. There should be no government interference in the economy. The economy is self correcting and vibrant when left alone. Keynesian Economics destroys freedom. Friedman was deeply disappointed in Nixon and his handling of the economy and his hands on approach. He later said there is more freedom in a dictatorship that has a hands off policy concerning the economy than a democracy with a hands on approach. With the US unwilling to make the drastic “shock” decisions with the economy his colleagues went to work in Chile trying to fight nationalization of key industries. The election of the socialist Allende and the beginnings of nationalization of copper and ITT. This brought pressure on Nixon and Kissinger to protect business interests. Allende was overthrown by a coup lead by Pinochet. The Chicago Boys (nationals trained by the Chicago School) and the Chicago school set up a drastic plan to “cure” Chile of socialism. The plan was also carried out by juntas in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Drastic privatization and allowing foreign ownership destroyed the economy of these countries. Nationalized industries are loyal to the nation. Private industry is loyal only to profits. Nationalization, although inefficient, creates jobs and markets.

Enemies were found in these countries. Chile had its infamous stadium holding centers and missing people. People who would be dragged away in the middle of the night never to be seen again. Some went to camps, some became bodies buried in walls, others were killed, had their stomachs cut open (so they would not float) and dropped into the ocean. The biggest group of people to disappear were workers. Any talk of organized labor was seen as a threat to the economy and dealt with harshly. Public gatherings were banned. In one case school children were arrested when as a group they asked for lower bus fares. Knowing that the governments could not arrest everyone involved in labor groups, but used the people they caught as examples to others.

The idea of shock treatment was also applied in Eastern Europe. Countries freed from the USSR looked to the west and the IMF and World Bank for help. The US only offered token aid and demanded that the previous governments debts would still be a valid debt. The IMF and World Bank programs came in with strings attached mostly with complete privatization and foreign ownership. What developed was a type of private colonization of newly freed counties. Klein treats Russia as a separate case from Eastern Europe. A very interest chapter on Thatcher is included. How a failing Prime Minister used a small war to claim victory against foreign enemies and turn her and the nation's interests to defeating domestic enemies -- coal miners union.

Shock and Awe was not only the invasion plan for Iraq, but also its economy. Foreign ownership and a “proper” constitution would part of the plan. Klein brings up an interesting point in war and occupation. There were requests for troops to protect the National Library and National Museum. These requests were ignored even though troops were available. In fact, there were cases where troops watched the looting. This was not just the loss of art. It was the loss of every dissertation written in Iraq, ancient texts, and art. In short it was the theft of a nation's history and identity. It was part of the clean slate wanted by the US and international organizations and businesses.

The US was not immune from shock. Exactly twenty-seven years after the US sponsored coup in Chile, the US was attacked in what was to be known as the 9/11 attacks. This shock we caused us to accept ideas and laws we would not have otherwise considered. It is frightening to listen to the number of congressmen who did not read the Patriot Act before signing it. Their reasoning was something like “It was called the Patriot Act. How could I not sign it.” Suddenly people’s patriotism was questioned. “If you do not support “X” you are unAmerican.” became a rather common refrain. What can be done about war? The military wanted more troops Rumsfeld declined and responded with private security. Conflict was becoming a consumer service; War with a smile. There was at least one example of active duty Marines under the control of private security in combat.

Not all shocks are manmade. Klein covers the Tsunami in Sri Lanka, Katrina, and Lebanon’s aid delivery. Not everything is doom and gloom for Klein there is hope. Democracy and people in Latin America and Eastern Europe have stood up and embraced democracy and vote their interests. Shock Doctrine covers forty years of history in great deal. The work is more than adequately documented. Klein presents a clear argument of where shock capitalism came from and how it has expanded. I have pages and pages of notes on this book that I have not included in the review. Outstanding history with a contemporary implications. ...more

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Mar 18, 2008 Rhyd Wildermuth rated it it was amazing

Shelves: capitalism-and-its-discontents

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, worki ...more

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Dec 16, 2013 Szplug rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canada-eh

One of the problems with Klein's bestselling jeremiad against the progressive global implementation of so-called free market policies over the past four decades is her attempts to link them, as a calculated stratagem, to the unsavory experimentation conducted in the fifties and sixties, by the CIA and their associated medical personnel, with personality modification and torture techniques designed to harvest information from subjects after rendering them vulnerable through administering disorien One of the problems with Klein's bestselling jeremiad against the progressive global implementation of so-called free market policies over the past four decades is her attempts to link them, as a calculated stratagem, to the unsavory experimentation conducted in the fifties and sixties, by the CIA and their associated medical personnel, with personality modification and torture techniques designed to harvest information from subjects after rendering them vulnerable through administering disorienting and disabling shocks. The evidence she presents is, at best, circumstantial and correlational, and it attempts to graft a veneer of evil onto the otherwise inflectionless economic policies conceived and implemented by the Chicago School under the formulative tutelage of Milton Friedman and his free market disciples.

It's unfortunate, because the case she presents—one drawing evidence from real world implementations across South America, Southeast Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe—is sufficiently strong without such a gimmick, making illuminative associations between the onset of financial crisis within Second or Third World polities and the usage of that crisis, primarily by the IMF and World Bank, the twin arms of the market-imposing Washington Consensus, to apply the shock of harsh economic re-orderings. Such shock tactics run roughshod over democratic principles, ignoring the wishes of the afflicted populace and their elected representatives in order to enforce debt repayment and impose free trade, with a focus upon building an export economy, the doing of which entails the crushing of unions, scaling-back of wages and welfare provisions, privatizing of industry, healthcare, and pensions, and propping up/creating central banks that an ordered honoring of foreign debt might be effected. It allows her a greater leeway with stamping her Shock classification for the various state unraveling and IMF patching together in a manner conducive to transferring wealth to the banks and corporations of the already mighty West at the expense of the well-being, financial prospects, and civil rights of the struggling nations being commanded to so arrange their economic affairs.

However, painting Milton Friedman as an evil man is simply pure polemic—and for some of her case studies Klein also fails to make clear to the reader important factors such as the parlous state of affairs prior to the stepping in of moneyed interests; the agendas of incumbent or freshly installed governing parties in the afflicted nations; political, cultural, and/or ethnical strains between the demographic constituencies of that polity, etc. In other words, there were myriad currents at play during several of these crises, and such complicating elements as nuance, subtlety, and interconnectedness can be given short shrift by the author when they do not fit themselves into her more simplified, more black and white determination of causality and purpose. In consulting sources of a differing interpretation than Klein's—and particularly relevant in the South American polities, where the postwar practice of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) had produced domestic industries rife with inefficiencies, corruption, and foreign debt—it becomes apparent that, in some instances, and in one form or another, things were plenty grim beforehand; and if there was money sufficient for a reasonable system of safety nets, it came via the liberal supply of foreign cash sent in to governments riddled with corruption and economic stagnation. Such is not a sustainable way of life—or, at least, not in the modern globalized evolution of it; and while Klein does point out how, with changes administered through governmental fiat via democratic pressure further down the line, when a measure of stability and economic strength had been maintained, several of the countries put under her microscope managed to achieve a better standard of living, she does not deem to allow that those early systemic shocks, in clearing out much deadwood and forcibly requiring governments and privatized industries to make gains in productivity and competitive prowess and adherence to accountability and the rule of law, were instrumental in setting the stage, however austerely and painfully, for those later ameliorations to be grafted onto a sturdier and more potentially enduring structure.

Some of the cases, as I noted. For others, like the Apartheid-turning of South Africa and the liberalization of Russia, Klein's critique is witheringly close to the mark. The fire sale conducted under the auspices of Western governments, with a huge proportion of former state-owned industries being transferred, for absurdly low prices, into the hands of a rapacious private industry, is simply inexcusable. And in the Iraq invasion and Hurricane Katrina, Klein presents a solid argument regarding the manner in which free market enthusiasts used such breakdowns in order to carry out a coup against one country's economy and another city's public services. Klein also raises very relevant questions about the iron-bound requirements placed upon newly liberated countries to make good for the grotesque debts run-up by previous dictators and despots: we are long overdue for a serious reworking of debt-forgiveness in such cases. It's not a simple thing to iron-out, for significant portions of that debt—at some level of the tiered flow—represents the savings of lower- and middle-class families who had no part in either the pre- or post-shock ordering of things—and it is for such reasons that I look forward to eventually tackling books like David Graeber's Debt which confront this problem head-on and with touted creativity. The Shock Doctrine is a valuable contribution to modern political and fiscal discussion—with its encompassing thematic detail, mustering of evidence (however selective in certain cases), and, most enjoyable of all, the author's superb writing. What's more, there are plenty of volumes out there proclaiming the wonders of our recently erected globalized market system; those such as Klein's are a welcome tonic, sobering in their presentation, righteous in their outrage, and compelling in their urge for readers to question exactly how manipulable these recurrent financial crises are, both in the way they are brought-about and settled afterwards. ...more

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May 18, 2010 Nick rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2000s, authoritarianism, awful-books, economics

(spoilers ahead, but it's not fiction so don't worry about it)

Where do I begin? This is a failed Noam Chomsky book.

Firstly, Klein is working with a strange definition of capitalism. When the free market economists who Klein refers to (like Friedman and Hayek) talk about capitalism they are referring to an economic system free of government intervention. Klein however uses the word capitalist to refer to the current economic model– one in which governments and corporations (spoilers ahead, but it's not fiction so don't worry about it)

Where do I begin? This is a failed Noam Chomsky book.

Firstly, Klein is working with a strange definition of capitalism. When the free market economists who Klein refers to (like Friedman and Hayek) talk about capitalism they are referring to an economic system free of government intervention. Klein however uses the word capitalist to refer to the current economic model– one in which governments and corporations work in tandem to exploit the general population. (Edit: I realize that "capitalism" has multiple definitions, but the problem is that Klein uses a different definition from the economists she is criticizing, which makes her entire criticism seem like an assault upon a strawman). Klein has essentially built a book around conflating capitalism with corporatism. This is fairly subtle in the first chapter, but reaches a point of real absurdity towards the end of the book. There is a clear distinction between the policies advocated by Hayek/Friedman, and George W. Bush. Klein purposefully obfuscates this.

The Shock Docterine starts out criticizing Milton Friedman for his activities in Chile. This is at least understandable because Friedman did in fact visit Chile and advise Piñochet. However, this is more or less where the facts begin and end. She soon moves on to more dubious claims- for instance, blaming Friedman and his acolytes for the Iraq war in particular (a war he expressly opposed) and the military industrial complex in general. It should be obvious to any reader that this sort of alliance between business and government has little to do with free markets, private property rights, or "capitalism" as defined by Chicago or Austrian school economists.

By the end of the book she really goes bonkers. She details the plight of several Sri Lankan fishing communities. Here is the story as she presents it: A hurricane hits Sri Lanka destroying many coastal settlements. Hotel companies see an opportunity decide to take possession of the coastal property, which has been conveniently cleared of all those pesky villages. The hotel companies move in and take possession of the beaches. When the villagers protest, the government police force defends the newly acquired beaches on behalf of the hotels using violence. The villagers are reduced to living in poverty and squalor because their land was stolen from them by the alliance of hotel companies and government.

In summary, The hotel companies used the government to steal the private property of the fishing communities. And this is supposed to be an example of free market practices that Hayek and Friedman would approve of. See the issue I'm having?

A modified version of this book would actually make for an apt criticism of corporatism, which is why I was tempted to give this book two stars. However, the problem here is far deeper than a confusion of terms. She actually ascribes neo-Conservative ideas to Libertarian or Classical Liberal thinkers. The Shock Doctrine is essentially the strawman from hell.

And for that it earns 1 star. ...more

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Nov 20, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-and-biography

A very disturbing book indeed. I can't decide whether I feel that her paranoia got out of control, or whether it is indeed a fair representation of US foreign policy over the last 30-40 years. A lot of it rings true. Though I hope that the links between torture and economic theory are not as clear as she paints them... that was the part I had the hardest time swallowing. Maybe we will learn more now that the Neo-Cons are going to lose control of the US.

_______________________________ A very disturbing book indeed. I can't decide whether I feel that her paranoia got out of control, or whether it is indeed a fair representation of US foreign policy over the last 30-40 years. A lot of it rings true. Though I hope that the links between torture and economic theory are not as clear as she paints them... that was the part I had the hardest time swallowing. Maybe we will learn more now that the Neo-Cons are going to lose control of the US.

___________________________________

I can't help thinking of The Shock Doctrine when I see the daily headlines here in Britain about the drastic changes our new government intends to make. Klein argues that the standard tactic the right has used is to wait for a crisis of some kind, and then use it as an excuse to rush through policies which they've prepared for this eventuality. In some cases, they engineer the crisis intentionally.

Okay... I can see that some of the government's policies can be defended as as a rational response to Britain's enormous debt. And then you have things like reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600. This is very advantageous to the Conservatives. But the official justification is that it will save £12M.

Now, people are often bad at comparing big numbers. We owe something around £900B, largely as a result of having to bail out the banks during the credit crunch two years ago. Let's divide by ten million and try to relate it to something we can actually understand. So, I'll suppose that my cousin somehow persuaded me to invest in his business venture, which sounded sensible but actually turned out to be a pyramid scheme that collapsed catastrophically. To our horror, this has left us saddled with a personal debt of £90,000, which we're slowly trying to pay off.

Not surprisingly, my partner is all over my case, and is taking the opportunity to get her way on a number of issues while she has the moral upper hand. But when she uses this argument to motivate not buying a copy of a Sunday newspaper that I like and she doesn't, and which costs £1.20, I feel she's gone too far. A saving this small makes no real difference. It's just exploiting the situation.

Well, as I see it, that's roughly what our government is doing now.
...more

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Oct 14, 2008 Chloe rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone curious as to why they are now unemployed

Shelves: damn-the-man, history, current-affairs, politics

As someone who used to consume nonfiction with the voracious appetite of a trucker at an Old Country Buffet, I find it odd and not a little unsettling that, since joining Goodreads, a solid 95% of my reading material has come from the fiction side of the bookstore. While this has definitely helped fill some dramatic gaps in my knowledge, it was with much relief that I tucked myself into Klein's The Shock Doctrine earlier this week. I'd attempted reading this in the heady afterglow of the election this p As someone who used to consume nonfiction with the voracious appetite of a trucker at an Old Country Buffet, I find it odd and not a little unsettling that, since joining Goodreads, a solid 95% of my reading material has come from the fiction side of the bookstore. While this has definitely helped fill some dramatic gaps in my knowledge, it was with much relief that I tucked myself into Klein's The Shock Doctrine earlier this week. I'd attempted reading this in the heady afterglow of the election this past November but I was not in the mood to be depressed so soon and replaced it on my shelf.

Two months into Obama's presidency, as the economy crumbles into so many pieces which are then greedily consumed by the jackals that make up the banking industry, Klein's definitive history of Friedman economics and their entwined history with brutality, terror and disparity seems especially apt. Granted, Friedman didn't do this all on his own. Rather, as Klein's thesis bears out, this occurs through a system of shocks to the nervous system of the target country, much as electro-convulsive therapy was developed as a means to wipe its subjects mind so that it could be reformatted into a socially acceptable form.

The first shock is generally political upheaval- a coup, terror attack, or governmental collapse, though Klein points out that natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina work just as well, that so upsets the regular routine of life that citizens are willing to invest extraordinary powers in the government and silence any dissent for the duration of the emergency. Sound familiar?

Next comes the economic shock, during which the social safety nets so despised by free-market zealots are taken away and former nationally-owned industries (oil, mineral, postal services, arms contracts, education, healthcare, pretty much everything) are "privatized," or sold at cut-rate prices to foreign investors who, through some never-explained sleight of hand will then lead the country into its bright capitalist utopia. Of course, as profit-driven enterprises are wont to do, this generally leads to corruption at unprecedented levels, currency inflation and record-bursting unemployment levels. "Relax," the economic advisers say (these well-trained theorists from Friedman's Chicago School of Economics), "these are just the birth pangs of a new economic era. Everything is under control."

Which is very true. Everything is very much under control. For, as social unrest grows, the next shock is coming. These are the state-sanctioned terror squads that quell social unrest by creating an atmosphere of unwavering brutality and terror. These are the Disappeared leftists of South America, herded into football stadiums and machine-gunned, the distraught funeral gatherings broken up with water cannons and riot police. These are electrodes under the nails, omni-present surveillance, bodies dropped from helicopters into farmer's fields, couples black-bagged during their own wedding ceremony and carted into torture facilities, in front of hundreds of witnesses who are all so very afraid to be next that they refuse to even acknowledge that the event occurred.

Klein charts the evolution of the titular Shock Doctrine from it's intellectual beginnings at the University of Chicago in the 1950s in horrified reaction to the New Deal and the Keynesian philosophy that holds that a country's economy should work to best serve the working classes that are it's lifeblood. Milton Friedman, godfather of this Doctrine, develops his economic theory of free-market systems using oh-so-precise calculations (this is the man who cried and recited Donne's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" upon seeing a geometric proof) yet lacks a real world opportunity to test them in.

Enter Chile in 1974, an alleged 3rd world country who has just elected the radical Salvador Allende who is promising further nationalization of vital industries and expanded benefits to its citizens. Obviously the man is a dangerous Marxist and must be deposed post haste, says the US-based United Fruit Company who has much to lose if these nationalizations occur. No sooner said than done. With the useful assistance of the CIA, the military executes Allende and installs General Pinochet as dictator who, with assistance from his Chicago Boys (worshipers at the fount of Friedman) dismantles the complete economy and disappears hundreds of thousands of upstart leftists.

Okay, so that was a bit too bloody for the world's tastes, but you can't argue with the profits. A few people got extremely rich, clearly the market works. Let's try that again, but this time a bit more slyly. So Klein ushers us through nearly every political upheaval of the past 30 years, from the Thatcherite Falklands War to the end of Apartheid in South Africa and communism in both Poland and Russia, illustrating in very explicit detail the cooption of movements in the name of free-markets, the economic blackmail of the IMF's structural adjustment programs, and the destruction of true freedom in order to create free markets.

What is shown is not a series of isolated events but the creation of post-nationalist systems in which the state serves as the source of endless wealth for a very few and muscle for the extortion that takes place in the name of freedom. Most effective is how, after hundreds of pages of showing how this program (or pogrom) worked overseas, Klein brings it home to the US and shows how the terror attacks of 2001, the Iraq War, and the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina allowed the Friedmaniacs to enact their policies in the states. Complete lack of oversight, no bid contracts, unregulated markets and massive speculation all ran rampant during the seven years of Bush's reign and Klein does well to show exactly how this system led to the economic armageddon that engulfs us today.

It is my only hope that Obama and his advisers have read and believed even one chapter of this book and seen Friedman's system for the massive fuck up that it is and are now looking to pull Keynes from the wilderness and enshrine his values firmly in the passages of law, finicky governors be damned. ...more

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Nov 26, 2007 Grant rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: every human on the planet

Shelves: activism, thinking, issues

I would seriously like to see every human on this planet read this book. I can’t think of any other book I would more highly recommend today.

The whole text was rich in the exposing of history and deep analysis. I strongly encourage anyone reading it to stick through to the end. The bulk of the book covers quite terrible things in the world, but the last chapter actually made me very hopeful and inspired.

Utterly brilliant!

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Jan 28, 2010 Daniel (Attack of the Books!) Burton rated it did not like it

Shelves: a-complete-waste-of-time

Because I'm about 3 pages away from returning it to the library, I've all but stopped reading this (and a buddy has told me that there are only specific passages that are worth reading, so I'll go find them, instead). It is so full of ad hominem, straw man, "just-because-it-was-done-by-the-GOP,-free-marketists,-or-people-who-liked-Milton-Friedman,-so-it-MUST-be-bad" arguments that I am wondering what it I am supposed to get out of what feels a lot like a left-wing rant? Klien hasn't actually arg Because I'm about 3 pages away from returning it to the library, I've all but stopped reading this (and a buddy has told me that there are only specific passages that are worth reading, so I'll go find them, instead). It is so full of ad hominem, straw man, "just-because-it-was-done-by-the-GOP,-free-marketists,-or-people-who-liked-Milton-Friedman,-so-it-MUST-be-bad" arguments that I am wondering what it I am supposed to get out of what feels a lot like a left-wing rant? Klien hasn't actually argued anything that has any basis in reality. It's kind of feels like I'm listening to Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, but instead it's a liberal who hates free markets and Republicans. It's just one liberal talking point after another, sans documenation, lots of anecdotes followed by the summary dismissal of "all because of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economics" or "all because of shock free markets." But I'm still waiting to hear that she's even talking about the results of free markets. Her entire argument seems to be "free markets equal evil" but she neglects any type of logical connection between the two.

Example: she jumps all over charter schools, but never really says whats wrong with them or that they aren't working. The only problem she sites is that the school unions are gone and that teachers don't like them. She implies that they are keeping the poor out of schools, but does not say it, because under a voucher system, students are funded to exactly the same level as under a non-charter system; they just get to choose what school they attend. IN otherwords, the public is still paying for a free education, but now students and their parents get to choose what school....but what's wrong with that? She doesn't say. Just says "it's bad for unions and teachers who worked in public schools before hate it" (though she doesn't actually site any teachers).

Example: she jumps all over Chile because "Pinochet was there" but never really makes a connection between Pinochet and the free market, other than to say "because they both happened at the same time, it must have been the free market that lead to all those people being tortured." What she doesn't mention is that Chile is the 8th most free economy in the world today and is ranked 3rd in the Americas (behind Canada and the US) and has experience 5% growth over the years from 2004-2009...but she doesn't ever talk about that or that today, after getting rid of Pinochet, Chile is one of the strongest, free-est, and fastest growing countries in South America, to say nothing of the world. Oh, she also forgets to mention that Pinochet is not in power any more but was ousted a long time ago.

Example: she attacks free market implimentation in Iraq, but fails to mention that most countries don't have ANY economy after a war, and that implimentation of an economy in Germany and Japan after WWII and in Korea after the Korea War didn't do too bad for them...in fact, it made them three of the strongest economies in the world. Implimentation of a non-free market economy in the countries of Poland, Romania, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, and Belarus didn't exactly work out for them...just ask the millions of people who had to live through it, then go ask the millions in West Germany, France, Italy and Japan that did benefit from the free market after WWII (as well as Korea and Singapore)

Example: she lays blame for the Asian crisis at the doorstep of the free market, but what she doesn't say is that these countries were already free markets before, and that after they have rebounded faster than those that were affected by the crisis but were not free economies.

Example: she attacks the free market for Russia's woes, but the free market was never implemented there. The Kremlin has taken over control of the media and oil companies, as well as several other large conglomerates. A list of the fifty richest people in Russia is also a list of the KGB class of 1999 and the "friends of Putin."

Example: Tienanmen Square a precursor to the free market? This is a clear case of the tail wagging the dog. It is widely credited as being the crisis that took down the then current party leadership in favor of leadership willing to open up China to allow more economic freedom, not the other way around, as she proposes (that it was the suppression of all those masses who wanted democracy, not economic freedom, silly...why would they want that?).

So, I am eager to know what redemptive qualities are in the book. It reads like liberal drivel that one only believes if it provides supporting evidence for what one already believes.

Look for it on the discount rack of second hand book stores near you soon... ...more

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Apr 18, 2019 Lorna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: political-history

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism was a riveting look at the policies advocated by economist Milton Friedman and his many followers at The Chicago School of Economics. Basically, it is a deliberate and strategic use of shock therapy to implement unpopular policies, utilizing the exploitation of national crises. The thinking is that the population would be so traumatized by the crises at hand, that they would pay little attention to what was happening, nor would they have the capacity to resist. ...more

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Dec 26, 2018 Science (Fiction) Comedy Horror and Fantasy Geek/Nerd a.k.a Mario rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-social-criticism

This book can affect worldview, authority faith and believe in official history

Please note that I have put the original German to the end of this review. Just if you might be interested.

Klein unleashes the shocking and disturbing facts of an economic policy practiced over more than four decades that can be described as a novelty of contempt for human beings, megalomania, and madness. Also, that wants to mean something because of the recent, not entirely bloodless world history.

One ...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Riya rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everybody

Shelves: politics

There are many detailed and eloquent reviews of this book already; however, I still feel like I have to write a review about this important book.

I've wondered for years why the world is the way it is. Why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why countries in Latin America and Africa are so poor and undeveloped. "Geez, South Africa, why can't you just get your s**t together and be like America? In fact, why can't all these countries be like us, what's wrong with them?" Well, ladies and g There are many detailed and eloquent reviews of this book already; however, I still feel like I have to write a review about this important book.

I've wondered for years why the world is the way it is. Why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why countries in Latin America and Africa are so poor and undeveloped. "Geez, South Africa, why can't you just get your s**t together and be like America? In fact, why can't all these countries be like us, what's wrong with them?" Well, ladies and gentlemen, the questions have been finally answered. This book literally turned my world upside down and changed my views on politics and economics. Mind = blown. No kidding.

So here is one of the reasons why the world is a messed up place: the shock doctrine, a dangerous ideology that has been implemented by the "great" economist Milton Friedman and his misguided acolytes since the 1970's. The plan is to shock people (whether it's through a natural disaster or a man-made one) and disorient them, and then swoop in implementing economic policies that benefit very few, and cripple many. The economic policies are:

1.) deregulation of markets - free trade baby!
2.) privatization of everything - congratulations, your job has been outsourced!
3.) tax cuts and elimination of social services - sorry old and poor people, you are on your own!

The most evil thing about this is that while America preaches freedom and democracy, the only way such policies can be implemented is through a repressive, dictatorial government. And if you resist, you'll most likely be shot, or tortured and then shot. Just ask the people in Chile and Argentina. They were the first countries to go through this experiment. While the people of these countries suffered from repression, poverty, torture, and death, the political leaders declared such economic policies as successful. After all, it made them SO MUCH money.

This policy has spread to other places: South Africa, Asia, Poland, Russia, etc. It made my blood boil to read about the way the Russian people were duped into such harsh economic policies. People's pensions were taken away, social services cut; all of a sudden millions of people couldn't afford even a loaf of bread. People were CHEATED out of everything they ever believed in. Instead of freedom and democracy, they got starvation, abject poverty, and a huge rise in crime.

If you think that this can only happen in other countries, just look at what's happened right here in America the past few years. Read about how much the people of New Orleans were swindled after Hurricane Katrina happened. Look at the state of the economy. Yep, Bush's tax cuts and deregulation of Wall Street really helped us. Ha!

I don't want to rant and rave anymore in this review. That is not my wish. I wish instead for everybody to read this book because it will open up your eyes, my friend, it will show you how we all have been lied to and deceived. It is only when we become aware of this problem, that we can work to change it. ...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Edward rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: naomi-klein, non-fiction, 3-star, own, north-america

Introduction
Blank Is Beautiful: Three Decades of Erasing and Remaking the World

--The Shock Doctrine

Notes
Acknowledgements
Index

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Jul 02, 2009 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone - it's a must read!

Shelves: 2009, favourite, political-science, economics, non-fiction, history

There is a kind of history that gets overlooked, that doesn't get taught in schools or universities aside from a fourth-year optional course that no one bothers to take. It's a history that is fundamental to understanding our world, both past and present and where the hell we're going. It's a history that touches everyone, regardless of class, gender, race or age, but that slips out the back door before anyone thinks to call it to account, put it on trial and expose its heinous crimes. I'm talki ...more

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Mar 01, 2010 Whitaker rated it liked it

Shelves: e-book, z_2010-read, economics

Three recent articles in The Guardian are particularly interesting in the light of Naomi Klein’s conclusions in this book. On the one hand, "'Day of Wrath' brings Russians on to the streets against Vladimir Putin" bears out her thesis of citizen blowback against unrestrained capitalism. So apparently does " 'Day of Wrath' brings Russians on to the streets against Vladimir Putin" bears out her thesis of citizen blowback against unrestrained capitalism. So apparently does "How China's internet generation broke the silence". That article, however, goes on to note:

Many in the west see it as self-evident that an increased flow of information will make officials more accountable and encourage people to challenge them. Yet studies of the internet's impact in China are inconclusive. One found that people with access to unofficial information and the internet actually held a more favourable view of inequalities and the party's justification of them. Another showed that blog posts on subjects such as political reform and freedom of expression were increasingly frequent, even when controlling for the rise in bloggers.

And "Britain leads in war on poverty, according to US academic" positively contradicts her other thesis that countries like Britain with its more Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism do worse than European socialist counterparts:

Britain's story on child poverty is also better than many in Europe. While the UK child poverty rate fell, "[it:] was rising or constant" on the continent. "Denmark, which had the lowest child poverty rate in the group in 1995, at 6%, saw its rate rise to 10% by 2006."

The trouble is that reality is often far more complicated and nuanced than her rather capacious and sweeping theories acknowledge. In dealing with the Asian financial crisis of 1997, she refers to Malaysia’s refusal to bow down to IMF might and its prompt installation of exchange controls. This is indeed credited for Malaysia's faster recovery and for it being less battered by the crisis than the countries that had accepted IMF’s remedies. So far I agree with her.

On the other hand, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Dr Mahatir, would never have accepted IMF’s conditions of opening up the economy to unfettered foreign investment not because of some altruistic desire to protect socialist policies, but for the reason that he is the architect of the pro-Bumiputra policy which requires that all companies in Malaysia be majority-owned by Malays, the ethnic majority in the country. The policy was intended to transfer wealth from the property-owning Chinese into Malay hands and has ended up benefitting only a small percentage of rich Malay families. Rural poverty remains a problem. This policy of “affirmative action” would evidently have been jeopardised by IMF policies calling for open foreign investment.

Thailand, on the other hand, which accepted the IMF loans and which saw its rural poor battered by the results ended up with a beneficiary of the reforms as its Prime Minister. Thaksin Shinawatra came to power in the general election of 2001, and became hugely popular, particularly in the north and north-east of the country, enfranchising the rural poor, and offering them healthcare for about US$0.50 and low-cost loans. He is also the country’s telecommunications mogul who had plans for privatisation of state services. The current protests going on in Bangkok by pro-Thaksin supporters, the Red-shirts, is as much a struggle between the rural poor and the wealthy royalist elites who have largely ignored rural problems and see Thaksin’s popularity with the poor as a threat to their own power.

Each of these situations have inconvenient elements that are ignored and glossed over by Ms Klein in her book which presents a straightforward narrative of capitalist oppression under Friedman-omics with its manifesto of using shock and destruction to force down and implement unfettered free market policies. This is something that I find utterly infuriating as it does a disservice to the important reporting that she has to tell us.

Her evidence showing that Friedman-ites were perfectly comfortable with using lies and statistical manipulation to bring a country’s economy to its knees was a critical indictment of them. The reporting that she does on Canada and Trinidad is particularly enlightening in this regard.

She also reports on the very important process of decentralisation and corporatisation of government functions in America by the neo-cons*, and how that has led to a reduction in standards in important services like infrastructure repair and education. This was something I found particularly frightening since a reduction in government power is not synonymous with greater individual freedom. Power vacuums do not remain unfilled: they are filled by other competing power centres like corporatists who have even less interest in maintaining true liberty. Hopefully, the election of Obama to the Presidency may reverse this trend.

Ms Klein also deserves thanks for her exposé of the lie that capitalism arises from natural human urges and that once states get out of the way the people will embrace the free market with love and fervour. This is a reductive theology and ignores the fundamental cultural differences between societies, and which underpins capitalist market behaviour. In addition, the swathe of destruction and misery that radical free market economic policies cause is a side of the story not often told while the destruction wrought by a people’s revolution (from the bloody French revolution of 1789 to Stalinist and Maoist purges) is generally well-known and too often harped upon.

There is no doubt in my mind that unfettered free markets are a bad idea. The much touted rising tide that raises all boats has turned out to be nothing more than a rising tide of inequality. Nevertheless, a number of wrongs that she parks at the doorstep of the free marketeers are not particularly capitalist or Friedman-ite regardless of how shameful they are:
-- The right’s blindness to the wanton destruction and savage repression of their dictators like Pinochet is matched by the left’s blindness to the wanton destruction and savage repression of their dictators like Stalin.
-- The opportunistic use of chaos to implement new regimes is no different in kind from calls of bloody revolution. Nor are capitalist-pig-Friedmanites the only ones who have sought to install blank slates in their societies.

So, where does that leave me? I’m very glad I read it. I learnt a number of interesting facts that I did not know before. But it infuriates me that she mucks up her very important story with tome-thumping polemics that do nothing to boost her credibility except to preach to the already converted. This is a story that is too important and deserves far better than that.

I'm still giving it three stars but it's five stars for the cautionary tales that she has to tell and minus three stars for the way she tells it, and plus one because I can't bring myself to give it only two stars.

*I love the irony that "con" in French means roughly "dick-head". I'm more than happy in that light to refer to Cheney and his ilk as neo-cons. ...more

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Mar 26, 2012 aPriL does feral sometimes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, non-fiction, politics

'The Shock Doctrine' describes how rich men rape poor countries while supposedly saving it. It is a sickening read. The book describes how Milton Friedman's economic theories work when put into practice by admirers such as the American Republican Party, and the second President George Bush.

Friedman's ideas have consistently produced failing States. Iraq is one example the author discusses with plenty of evidence of how it is done: outsource the war to private security firms and the following pl 'The Shock Doctrine' describes how rich men rape poor countries while supposedly saving it. It is a sickening read. The book describes how Milton Friedman's economic theories work when put into practice by admirers such as the American Republican Party, and the second President George Bush.

Friedman's ideas have consistently produced failing States. Iraq is one example the author discusses with plenty of evidence of how it is done: outsource the war to private security firms and the following plan of 'nation building' to corporation employees in place of government employees. Outsourcing promotes the theft of billions of taxpayer money through inflated billings while incompetent contractors look as if they are doing something to fulfill their contracts. Klein also shows how governments, in trying to save themselves from a variety of economic crises, have employed Friedman's horrible policies, imposed on them by various international powers and banks, end up in reality impoverishing their citizens while foreigners and homegrown elites extract most of the wealth created and deposit it to their own personal bank accounts.

What the shock doctrine is, it is forcing a country to sell off most of its assets. Rich men take advantage of natural disasters or intentionally created financial crashes which bring a country to its knees. When a country is faced with a sudden disaster where many people are suddenly out of work and governments are stunned by the suffering and fear and destruction, banks and corporations move in and rape the country while promising to fix the problems with cash (borrowed at high interest) while imposing strict limitations on social security, fuel supports or food subsidies to the poor. The banks also force the sale of publicly owned electrical grids and water and sewer plants to private foreign companies and countries, who then fire the local employees and raise the price of the heretofore affordable necessities of daily life. Poverty rates typically jump from perhaps 10% to 30-60%.

In other words, a troubled country is forced into deeper, more painful difficulties intentionally in order to force the selling at rock bottom prices of everything of value to business entities which have no interest in helping or saving the country's citizens. While people are shocked and fearful because of disasters, they meekly allow the foreign corporations to 'save' them by stealing their assets and starving them.

Friedman also promoted using the most extreme methods on any protestors who dare to fight back at being raped, robbed and starved to deepen the shock and upset, through what used to be called brainwashing methods. In actuality, it means using torture.

Friedman thinks these policies will improve the functioning of everything eventually; however, Klein demonstrates in example after real world example (Brazil, Argentina, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, and others) how Friedman's theories when put into practice actually destroyed the lives of millions of people and enriched only the top 1%, and as a bonus brought unbearable suffering to the 99%. ...more

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Nov 08, 2016 Conor Ahern rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, dystopian, audiobook, author-female, non-fiction, books-i-evangelize-for

Not sure how much more piercing looks I can take into America's rotten, blackened core, but that is due more to fatigue than to any criticism I had of this book. Klein presents to us a world that is so paralyzed and bamboozled by entropy and bureaucracy that the only way to catalyze meaningful change is to either take advantage of or foment massive disasters--whether in terms of disaster response, warfare, or regime change. She starts with Allende's Chile, as all books of this ilk do, and moves ...more

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Mar 10, 2016 Jose Moa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, politics

The extremisms and fanatisms normally gets out the worst of the human being giving way to intolerance and many times physical elimination of those that dont share its ideas and by that giving way to mass murders and genocides.

There are religion,racial and politic economic extermisms or fanatisms,

In the 20 century there were several mass murders and genocides originated in this extremisms.

The christian Armenian genocide was a religious genocide.

The ...more

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Mar 30, 2008 Mark rated it liked it

Dear Naomi Klein,
I recently finished reading your latest book, The Shock Doctrine. Your detailed account of the connections between neoliberal economic policy and the use of violent repression, the decline of welfare states, and the rise of corporatized war and disaster capitalism is compelling. You thread together the recent histories of military brutality in the Southern Cone of South America, union busting in Margaret Thatcher’s England, and the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Thro Dear Naomi Klein,
I recently finished reading your latest book, The Shock Doctrine. Your detailed account of the connections between neoliberal economic policy and the use of violent repression, the decline of welfare states, and the rise of corporatized war and disaster capitalism is compelling. You thread together the recent histories of military brutality in the Southern Cone of South America, union busting in Margaret Thatcher’s England, and the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Through these histories you make explicit that acts of violent political repression against leftist organizers were not chance occurrences during periods of economic transition. On the contrary, you show that they were deliberate acts of “shock therapy” used by governments to numb and eliminate those opposed to the implementation of neoliberal policies such as the privatization of public services, the elimination of spending on social programs, and the deregulation of industry wage, safety and environmental standards.

You demonstrate the “constricted freedom” of post cold-war governments in Poland, Russia, and South Africa, who, in spite of initial aspirations to build social democratic welfare states, ended up implementing neoliberal economic reforms with disastrous consequences for the majority of their people. You then bring your analysis of neoliberalism to the United States, describing the rise of the privatized war machine and the parallel emergence of the occupation of Iraq as a profitable market for investments in military technology, homeland security, and the rebuilding of basic infrastructure destroyed by the aforementioned military technology. Finally, you tie it all together by concluding that the neoliberal economic model, in its thirst for new markets, is now preying upon areas struck by natural disasters to accumulate the profits it desires. “Disaster capitalism,” as you aptly name it, was evident in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and in Sri Lanka after the tsunami when large numbers of poor people were prevented from returning to their weather damaged homes in order to create lucrative new investment opportunities on the land they previously inhabited. The most sinister part of neoliberalism’s trajectory, as you note at the end of your book, is that when war and disaster are profitable enterprises, there are increased incentives to start wars and allow natural phenomena to deteriorate into social catastrophes.

To begin, I want to say that I learned a lot from reading your book. I was continually impressed by your ability to organize complex historical events into easily understandable patterns. You have clearly demonstrated neoliberalism’s historical dependence on political, economic, and physical “shock.” I am writing you, however, because despite my deep appreciation for the work you have done, I also have a major concern. You do an excellent job of describing many of the problems that come with neoliberalism, but I am afraid your analysis does not give a good account as to why neoliberal ideas are being implemented in the first place. Without a clear understanding of why neoliberalism is the policy of choice for many governments and economists today, you fail to put forward a comprehensive vision for how neoliberalism can be transformed.

For these reasons, I am concerned that many people will read your book and become motivated to make change, but will not be equipped with the right tools to do so. I am concerned that without the right tools, these motivated people will continue to focus on pressuring governments and/or economists to make change but will have little success persuading them to do so. I am concerned that these motivated people, after not having much success, will start to believe those who say that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union prove that free market capitalism is the final stop on the train of economic history. Moreover, I am concerned that these motivated people, frustrated by their inability to make change, will reluctantly give into the idea that capitalism (and the neoliberal ideology that now accompanies it) is the only way to organize economies after all.

With these concerns in mind, I would like to suggest that you take a look at another book that maps the rise of neoliberalism in the latter half of the twentieth century. The book is The Dilemmas of Social Democracies by two Peace Studies Professors at Earlham College, Howard Richards and Joanna Swanger. Instead of focusing on the violence and repression associated with neoliberal economics, Richards and Swanger focus on rules. They would argue that your book takes a wrong turn on the second to last page of the introduction when you make the claim that there is no reason that market-based economies are incompatible with decent wages, free health care, and quality public education. They would say that there is a very good reason that markets and government led social welfare programs do not mix: the basic cultural rules that shape our current economy do not allow them to. They would explain that until the basic rules of our economy are changed, governments have few options for making economic policies that serve the needs of all of their people...

Read the entire "open letter to Naomi Klein" at: http://www.infactispax.org/volume3/We...
...more

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Jan 27, 2008 Maura rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics, all-time-favorites, human-rights, history, made-a-huge-impression-on-me, non-fiction

Wow. This and Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America, which Klein cited frequently, are the two best books I've read in years.

What's amazing is that none of the historical or current events she covered were really new to me--I read the papers, I'm up on my Latin American history, and I'd had a basic understanding of Chicago School ideology... but she pointed out connections between them all that I hadn't seen before. I felt her analogizes between economic shock therapy and torture pra ...more

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Jan 03, 2008 Naeem rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: those who like Chomsky, Parenti, and Polanyi

Recommended to Naeem by: paul puhr

The mid-book review (see below) holds up. I have finished the book and it is not a good book. It is a great book. Klein has really achieved something here. Politics, economics, international relations, culture, ideology, and the human capacity to resist domination -- all come together here.

Klein's global range and tremendous detail are really heartening to me.

Below is the mid-book review written a few days ago:

I am up to chapter 11 (out of 22). So this is a mid-book review.

There i ...more

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Sep 26, 2009 Becky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: EVERYONE. (I'm not just saying that this time.)

Shelves: non-fiction, reviewed, audiobook, politicalish, 2010, highly-recommended

I'm going to begin this review with the most important part: Read this book.

I've wanted to read this book for quite a while, being that I like to think I'm not a complete political dumbass. I know that George "Dubya" Bush's administration was corrupt and a disease-ridden greed breeding-ground. I knew that Dick Cheney isn't to be trusted as far as a paraplegic could throw him, that Dubya himself is far from being the no-brain borderline illiterate that he liked to play on TV, and is beyond devious. A I'm going to begin this review with the most important part: Read this book.

I've wanted to read this book for quite a while, being that I like to think I'm not a complete political dumbass. I know that George "Dubya" Bush's administration was corrupt and a disease-ridden greed breeding-ground. I knew that Dick Cheney isn't to be trusted as far as a paraplegic could throw him, that Dubya himself is far from being the no-brain borderline illiterate that he liked to play on TV, and is beyond devious. And I may just piss off a lot of people here, but Obama's no better. What happened to withdrawing our troops? What happened to not allowing lobbyists into his administration? What happened to "greater transparency in Washington"? I could go on and on...

I consider myself to be somewhat informed, but this book made me feel like I was born yesterday. I've lived through many of the conflicts detailed in this book, and while it's true that I was a child for most of them, I've also lived through the last 8 years when I was not a child, and I feel woefully ignorant of the world after having read this book.

It was definitely an eye-opener. I've never been much for economics, I grasp the basic concepts (supply and demand, etc), but it was never one of my strong points in school. And in school, mine at least, we were given a basic overview, a test, and a grade, then sent on our way. There was no in depth analysis, no history to examine the different types in a real life scenario, no discussion of how economics can influence policy or politics. So, essentially, we're left completely unprepared for econo-political manipulation.

Klein begins the book by talking about Dr. Ewen Cameron, and his techniques in the 50's for trying to create a blank slate of the mind in order to rebuild a new and better personality in place of a "broken" one. To such breakages including anxiety or depression or OCD, he would apply massive doses of experimental drugs - LSD, PCP, etc - along with multiple shock therapies at many times the average or recommended limit, as well as isolation, disorientation, and depersonalization techniques. He was determined to "peel away the onion layers of the mind" and arrive at a blank slate which he could then rewrite with the desired attributes... "You are a good wife and mother," or "You are not afraid of public places," etc. Many, many people left his "care" more damaged and broken than when they came in, which memory loss, muscle damage or bone fractures or broken teeth from the high voltages used on them, to name just a few physical effects, and many of them had these techniques performed on them without their knowledge or consent. Terrifying. This is the good doctor that assisted so willingly in the CIA's research in their mind-control and brainwashing program, MKULTRA.

Klein mentions this with good reason, which is that a traumatic event, or a shock, is the best time to shove through massive and sweeping economic policy changes. While the general public is busy trying to put their lives back together, they aren't looking at what is being done behind the curtain, and therefore cannot interfere. The type of changes outlined here are ones that are easily recognizable if you know to look. Klein called it "Extreme Capitalism", it's essentially a free market economy in which all goods and services are privatized and unregulated. The stated theory is that with all government "interference" (read: regulation) removed, the free market plan will just magically stabilize itself and be a perfect economy. Except, this is patently impossible - even a blind person can see that. Greed prevents it. People who own the industry that's been privatized will want ever more profits, which means higher costs, which leads to inflation, while people who have lost their goverment or union provided jobs to privatized industry have no means to pay for the goods or services, which leads to more and more desperate poor while the rich profit off of their need to eat.

Naturally, to prevent revolt and uprisings, harsher and harsher methods are needed to keep the people under control, which is where terror comes in. People are tortured, taken from their homes, kidnapped, imprisoned, and outright murdered to 1) remove the threat from people who stand against the economic misery that they've been subjected to, and 2) serve as a message to anyone else thinking of making a stand. Klein outlines country after country which has given Extreme Capitalism a go, and in every case, it ruins the economy of the country, and the lives of those who live there, while fattening the bank accounts of a select few elite who profit off of the masses. This perfect plan creates outrageous national deficits, unheard of levels of unemployed, and astronomical profits for the companies which have been privatized.

I'll never look at my government, or any government, the same way again. Greedy exploitation at any cost. What better than an unwinnable and perpetual war then to continue the exploitation and corruption? Ugh. It's sickening. National identity, heritage and history are destroyed to make way for Wal-marts and McDonalds and 7-11 stores. Iraq's national museum, which housed priceless and irreplaceable artifacts from the beginning of human history, was looted and many artifacts are destroyed or missing, all in an attempt to wipe away the cultural memory so that there will be a clean slate for the new corporate economy and nation.

This review sucks. Just read the book. Really. I can't do it justice. It's important, and if you don't feel sick afterward, I might suspect that you're a multi-gajillionaire corporate mogul just stepping off of some newly-impoverished country's back on your way to the next. =\

4.22.10/ Edit to add: In honor of Earth Day, I was sent this slide show, and I think it's relevant, so I'm linking to it here. www.Miniature-Earth.com Watch the slide-show. I hope it affects you. ...more

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Mar 09, 2012 Katie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, favorites

I can't emphasize enough how important the subject matter of this book is. It took me years of reading and doing my own research to discover what Naomi Klein is able to convey in one very well-researched book. As a young economics student, I was taught (and believed for a time) that an unrestrained market would benefit everybody and that it was circling the globe because it was a popular idea that people in other countries were catching on to. An idealistic picture was painted for me and no oppo I can't emphasize enough how important the subject matter of this book is. It took me years of reading and doing my own research to discover what Naomi Klein is able to convey in one very well-researched book. As a young economics student, I was taught (and believed for a time) that an unrestrained market would benefit everybody and that it was circling the globe because it was a popular idea that people in other countries were catching on to. An idealistic picture was painted for me and no opposing views were offered, so it's no wonder that I bought into it. However, my worldview was forever changed after reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and I started to dig deeper into the subject.

Where Economic Hit Man introduces the idea of coercing leaders into enacting free-market policies, Shock Doctrine picks up by chronicling why and how this has been done over a period of several decades. What Shock Doctrine makes very clear is that nobody was really choosing to free their markets and privatize all their industries. Rather, many free-market ideas are so unpalatable to people that democracy has to be suspended in order to pass such policies. Whether or not you are a believer in free-market dogma, I think most people would agree that sovereign, democratic states should have the ability to make their own choices rather than having an outside ideology forced on them through the use of terror. For this reason, I think everyone should read this book to understand how the US has lead a worldwide effort to undermine democracy in one country after another, all in the name of the free market. If this doesn't cause you to question our militarism, then I don't know what will.

Furthermore, not only has free-market ideology been forcefully applied, but it did not produce the results that were promised. Actually, the whole story (which you don't get in university economics departments - they only teach the convenient pieces) demonstrates time and time again that these policies, while great for the owners at the top, create a situation for most people that is much worse than before. Klein shows that in case after case, after implementing free-market policies, unemployment sky-rocketed, prices for necessities like food, water, and electricity shot up, often becoming unaffordable for large segments of the population, and poverty rose dramatically while a select few (now known as the 1%) profited dramatically. This is perhaps the most powerful message in the book because if an economic theory, when applied in the real world, does not produce the intended results, it refutes the theory and proves it false. This is an extremely important point to make because US domestic and foreign policy continues to be guided by free-market ideology. It is completely unacceptable for our government to be basing its most important decisions on an ideology that is a proven failure.

I recently learned that it took 4 years, with a team of researches, to write this book. You can certainly tell. It doesn't read as opinion because it's not based on opinions. It's a well-formed thesis that is supported by solid evidence, and plenty of it. It's this thorough research that makes it so important - because before this book, it took people like myself years to put together enough bits and pieces to get the whole picture and see US foreign policy for what it really is: military intervention on behalf of money-hungry capitalists who view other countries as new markets ripe for profit rather than sovereign states where we have no right to interfere in their politics. Thanks to Naomi Klein, the truth just got more accessible. ...more

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Sep 01, 2011 Gordon rated it liked it

Authored by Canadian journalist and anti-globalization crusader Naomi Klein, this book quickly became an international bestseller in 2007. The global financial crisis that started the following year didn't hurt its sales either, given its title and subject matter.

The thesis of the book is that right-wing elites take advantage of political, economic and military crises in order to enact wholesale, rapid makeovers of a country's political and economic system. She believes that the underlying phil ...more

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About Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

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Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, documentary filmmaker and author of the international bestsellers No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. She is a senior correspondent for The Intercept and her writing appears widely in such publications as The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and The Nation, where she is a contributing editor. Klein iand Theas The

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