The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

For three decades, Friedman and his followers had methodically exploited moments of shock in other countries—foreign equivalents of 9/11, starting with Pinochet’s coup on September 11, 1973. What happened on September 11, 2001, is that an ideology hatched in American universities and fortified in Washington institutions finally had its chance to come home.

Best understood as a “disaster capitalism complex,” it has much farther-reaching tentacles than the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned against at the end of his presidency: this is global war fought on every level by private companies whose involvement is paid for with public money, with the unending mandate of protecting the United States homeland in perpetuity while eliminating all “evil” abroad.

Now wars and disaster responses are so fully privatized that they are themselves the new market; there is no need to wait until after the war for the boom—the medium is the message.

the ideology is a shape-shifter, forever changing its name and switching identities. Friedman called himself a “liberal,” but his U.S. followers, who associated liberals with high taxes and hippies, tended to identify as “conservatives,” “classical economists,” “free marketers,” and, later, as believers in “Reaganomics” or “laissez-faire.” In most of the world, their orthodoxy is known as “neoliberalism,” but it is often called “free trade” or simply “globalization.”

A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalism that justifies bottomless spending on security.

shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.

There was now a twin consensus about how society should be run: political leaders should be elected, and economies should be run according to Friedman’s rules. It was, as Francis Fukuyama said, “the end of history”—“the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution.”43

the contentious Black Book of Communism. “Is the ideology itself blameless?”45 Of course it is not. It doesn’t follow that all forms of Communism are inherently genocidal, as some have gleefully claimed, but it was certainly an interpretation of Communist theory that was doctrinaire, authoritarian, and contemptuous of pluralism that led to Stalin’s purges and to Mao’s reeducation camps.

The truth seems so bizarre: “I am writing a book about shock. About how countries are shocked—by wars, terror attacks, coups d’état and natural disasters. And then how they are shocked again—by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy. And then how people who dare to resist these shock politics are, if necessary, shocked for a third time—by police, soldiers and prison interrogators.

By 1963, twelve of the department’s thirteen full-time faculty members were graduates of the University of Chicago program, and Sergio de Castro, one of the first graduates, was appointed faculty chairman.29 Now Chilean students didn’t need to travel all the way to the U.S.—hundreds could get a Chicago School education without leaving home. The students who went through the program, whether in Chicago or its franchise operation in Santiago, became known throughout the region as “los Chicago Boys.” With more funding from USAID, Chile’s Chicago Boys became enthusiastic regional ambassadors for ideas Latin Americans call “neoliberalism,” traveling to Argentina and Colombia to set up more University of Chicago franchises in order to “expand this knowledge throughout Latin America, confronting the ideological positions which prevented freedom and perpetuated poverty and backwardness,” according to one Chilean graduate.30

Theirs is a system based entirely on a belief in “balance” and “order” and the need to be free of interferences and “distortions” in order to succeed. Because of these traits, a regime committed to the faithful application of this ideal cannot accept the presence of competing or tempering worldviews. In order for the ideal to be achieved, it requires a monopoly on ideology; otherwise, according to the central theory, the economic signals become distorted and the entire system is thrown out of balance.

by others: Why? They answer matter-offactly: “Since the economic policy was extremely unpopular among the most numerous sectors of the population, it had to be implemented by force.”23

The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system—whether political, religious or economic—that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling.

torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.

Torture is sickening, but it is often a highly rational way to achieve a specific goal; indeed, it may be the only way to achieve those goals. Which raises the deeper question, one that so many were incapable of asking at the time in Latin America. Is neoliberalism an inherently violent ideology, and is there something about its goals that demands this cycle of brutal political cleansing, followed by human rights cleanup operations?

The Chicago Boys’ first adventure in the seventies should have served as a warning to humanity: theirs are dangerous ideas.

“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

market crashes could precipitate left-wing revolutions, so too could they be used to spark right-wing counterrevolutions, a theory that became known as “the crisis hypothesis.”

In December 1994, Yeltsin did what so many desperate leaders have done throughout history to hold on to power: he started a war. His national security chief, Oleg Lobov, had confided to a legislator, “We need a small, victorious war to raise the president’s ratings,” and the defense minister predicted that his army could defeat the forces in the breakaway republic of Chechnya in a matter of hours—a cakewalk. 59

casual, viendo como la historia ya dió la vuelta