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    The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
    The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
    The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
    Audiobook (abridged)9 hours

    The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

    Written by Naomi Klein

    Narrated by Jennifer Wiltsie

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq

    In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.

    The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.

    At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

    Editor's Note

    Provocative & sobering…

    One of the most provocative, sobering, and controversial looks at who profits and how in the wake of disasters both natural and man-made. Klein tackles the destructiveness of capitalism with biting clarity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateSep 18, 2007
    ISBN9781427200891
    Author

    Naomi Klein

    Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of international bestsellers including This Changes Everything, The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, No Is Not Enough, and On Fire, which have been published in more than thirty-five languages. She is an associate professor in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, the founding codirector of UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice, and an honorary professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers University. Her writing has appeared in leading publications around the world, and she is a columnist for The Guardian.

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    Reviews for The Shock Doctrine

    4.5/5

    1,091 ratings73 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is an essential explanation of how disaster capitalism works. The main case studies are Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war. This book predated the 2008 crisis by about a year, but the methods described were implemented then, just like Hurricane Katrina.

      Understanding disaster capitalism is essential to understanding why the Covid-19 bailouts are going to immediately increase inequality.

      Your government is screwing you.
    • 5/5
      Shockingly good and relevant! 5 bags of popcorn and a roll of paper towels??????
    • 5/5
      The best book I've red so far! A must for everybody interested in how capitalists shape our world today. After reading it you will change your perspective on how the world economy functions.
    • 5/5
      Must read for everyone, especially high school students. The future is in their hands...May 2020
    • 5/5
      This book should be required reading in America. So many harmful myths still perpetuated today would meet their immediate demise.
    • 5/5
      I don't normally read non-fiction and this has been sitting on my book shelf for a while now but, once I started, I couldn't put it down.The book covers the South American economies of the 70's, Thatchers UK in the 80's, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 through to the occupation of Iraq. It covers how the CIA tested out ideas of shock therapy on people to re-build them and how this was used on economies in need of support or in some cases of regime change (though the latter was always in the eyes of America).The idea was to bring great "improvements" there had to be a major event that caused so much shock to allow governments to be able to do whatever they wanted (i.e. 9/11). The books shows cases such as this and even though the poorest suffered and the large companies gained this never stopped the IMF putting this forward each time as the solution to get money.While reading this book the Euro crisis rumbles on....Greece is protesting about cuts and the IMF loan money but want a more open society where privatisation occurs. And as you read the book you can link each happening in Greece to what you are reading. Scarey but you see how the wheels of the world are working. Definately worth the read.
    • 5/5
      This is quite possibly one of the best books I have ever read and I want everyone I know to read it. It is well researched, disturbing, and extremely informative. I am very happy I decided to read this book.
    • 5/5
      In the light of Christchurch's recent devastating earthquakes, and ensuing changes to our school and education policies, I was excited to read in the first chapter about "Disaster Capitalism" being a well established method of pushing through unpopular economic reform. The economic reform is generally comprised of three things: privatisation, government spending cuts and deregulation (free-trade). And the disaster, although in our case was a natural one, can be in the form of war, civil unrest, the bottoming out of an economy- all of which can be manufactured, btw.This book looks in depth at the situations we have all heard of in various countries over the last 40 years. Chile in the 1970s when popular socialist leader Allende was overthrown by US backed General Pinochet is heralded as the first "experiment" in using shock tactics to bring in free-trade. It was also one of the most harsh on the general population. People were "shocked" into submission by violence, torture, imprisonment, and by being "disappeared" if they displayed so much as a skerrick of left-wing ideals. With the public silenced, the economy was transformed into what would eventually leave a few multi-nationals very very rich, and Chileans without government/military connections, very very poor.It is very difficult not to cast America as the bad guy here. The IMF and the World Bank both had policies to make loans dependent on the implementation of the three aspects discussed above- known collectively as the Washington Consensus. They stepped in when countries were in crisis, and then had them by the balls for the foreseeable future. The IMF and World Bank were (and are?) populated by proponents of the Chicago School of Economics thinking. Right-wing free-trade-at-any-cost economists. These guys hold tight to the idea that without any government controls, economies not only flourish, but have unlimited growth (personally I have huge problems with this theory, not the least of which is the fact the unlimited growth is impossible based on the fact that there is a limit to natural resources).The book goes on to discuss Argentina, Russia's transformation from communist state to extreme capitalist zone, Britain under Thatcher, Poland, China's opening up, South Africa, Sri Lanka post tsunami, Iraq war and Israel in great detail and providing a side of the story that you would never have read about in the papers. The lengths that were gone to to implement economic reform are incredible. The level of crony-ism and back room deals played out between politicians and US policy advisors, the IMF and business leaders is astounding.This book reads like a thriller, one in which you cannot wait for the good guys to come in and rescue the masses. The idealist in me thinks the good guys are coming, but the realist in me knows that where there is multi-millions to be made, the greedy will not stop at any cost to feather their own nests.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding book that should be required high school reading! If unabashed capitalism makes your skin crawl as it does mine, this book will be difficult to get through, but absolutely necessary to be a well informed, dissenting citizen.

      The quality of the recording, however, was problematic at times. It would cut out randomly causing me to miss portions of the text. Perhaps some kind of update needs to be done to fix this?
    • 4/5
      If you want to change the path we're on, you need to understand where we are going to change direction. This is a well written look at the art of disaster capitalism and the Friedmanites who carry it on to this day.
    • 5/5
      Shock Doctrine is a brillant expose on world economics and politics. Naomi Klein follows in the footsteps of Upton Singclair as a muckracking, investigating journalist. The Shock Doctrine, Klein argues, is an attempt by politicians on both sides of the isle to exploit disasters, including economic, political, man-made and natural. Politicians use these disasters as cover to pass extreme agendas that target public services, including education and housing. For example, George Bush passed No Child Left Behind shortly after September 11. No Child Left Behind was designed to fail, eventually forcing parents to send their children to private religious schools. In other words, it was designed to circumvent the separation of church and state and eliminate public education. Another education example Klein cites are charter schools in post-Katrina New Orleans. Most of the public schools were wiped out in the hurricane. Rather than spending money to rebuild public schools, the government turned them into private charter schools, which have their own rules. Because New Orleans is a mostly African-American community, these charter schools have their own rules and don't follow the Constitution giving African-Americans equal status; thus, the African-American community in New Orleans is purposely getting a substandard education, thanks to the government. A third example Klein cites is the outsourcing of U.S. military activities in Iraq to Halliburton and Blackwater. These companies run Iraq the way they want, not the way Iraqis want, and, in the process, produce revenue. In other words, we sacrifice democracy for profit. The Shock Doctrine is not a "everyone should read this book," it a book that everyone MUST read. When you finish, you'll say "no wonder the world is so screwed up."
    • 5/5
      A foundation text for the 21st century revolution. One of my new faves.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Utter rubbish that ignores the cultures of nearly every example she uses as failures not of capitalism but of stunning examples of corporate cronyism. Is the right correct in this, no? Were Soviets better off under communism? Absolutely not. This shouldn’t be as angering to me as it is, considering the author was raised by avowed communists, but the level of disingenuous drivel is astonishing.
    • 2/5
      Naomi certainly makes some interesting points and has done heavy duty research. What she is saying strikes a chord with many people, which explains why this book receives so many positive reviews.Unfortunately, though, the vitriolic nature of this work makes Naomi seem like a loose cannon or a hammer looking for a nail. She doesn't pretend to hide her contempt for privitization, Milton Friedman, free market capitalism, Chicago school economics, and what not. There is no pretense of balance as she employees jackhammer-style reasoning (often with little proof). She doesn't account for the subtleties of the issues involved. In her her jackhammer approach, a spade is a spade and if it isn't--it becomes one. She flattens distinctions and broadsides nuances into flat surfaces. And, as it has already been pointed out elsewhere, Naomi uses every rhetorical trick in the book.Her attacks on Milton Friedman are particularly vitriolic. And yet the system she critiques as being "Friedmanite" doesn't even come close to implementing his ideals fully! Klein attacks Friedman for supporting tyranny in Chile, but really, all Friedman did was advise the Chilean government, and those reforms were implemented to some degree. Hardly cause to attack Friedman's character. And, of course, Naomi lists bad things that happened under free-market systems, but doesn't contrast that with what happened under those same countries under a government regulated economy. According to Naomi, the Cato Institute is neo-conservative and FDR's New Deal was not only good, but necessary. OK. I'll have to differ on that, but let's continue..Be prepared for nauzeating buzz-words with no value except for emotional and rhetorical: "Corporate new jerusalem", "balooning corporate power", "radical free market", "corporatist", "dazzling rich and disposable poor", "corporate supremisist", "the rise of corpratism", "ultra-conservative", "maniacal quest", "the corporatist alliance", etc.Naomi does have a valid critique regarding the way the government panders to big firms and, in privitization, plays political games. But that is not really a critique of true free-market capitalism, but rather it a critique of a particular form of government intervention over against another form of it.There's no doubt that Naomi is quite sharp and intelligent and that this book is no small feat. But, really, I suggest you look elsewhere if you want a balanced critique from a similar perspective. There isn't much in this book to commend it to you. The unique true facts in this book can be found elsewhere, and without the poisonous vitriol.And in closing, if you've already read Naomi's attack on Milton Friedman, do yourself a favor and read his ideas first hand--in "Capitalism and Freedom". He deserves a fair evaluation--without Naomi's sarcastic, slanted rhetoric.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      An extremely eye opening book. It goes into detail on the evils of capitalism and how those in power can use "shock treatment" to capitalize on disasters and use these as opportunities to transfer wealth from the local people to the hands of corporatist oligarchs.
    • 5/5
      This book made me feel sick. It gave me nightmares. My only regret about reading it is that I didn't read it sooner. It's a huge shock--ha-- to find out that the country that prides itself on being a paragon of democracy has done so much to destroy it. If the current pandemic has begun to open your eyes to the brutality of capitalism, you need this book. Actually, everyone needs this book.
    • 4/5
      Reading The Shock Doctrine, I got flashbacks to reading No Logo all those years ago when I was a student. Klein's writing was eye-opening back then, and her case studies and research made even a dry brick of a book a project that I could not set down. It is the same experience with this one. The sheer amount of detail and background make Klein's book very addictive because it feels like an attempt at keeping a record of events that will probably be edited out of the footnotes of history.The Shock Doctrine feels like an attempt of holding people accountable, and it is a very timely and thought-provoking read. It's also entirely infuriating. It's very depressing to be reminded that current events/circumstances are the very basis for the disaster capitalism that Klein describes. The only reason that I am not increasing my rating for this book is that I felt it lacked balance, which was most evident for me when Klein wrote about Hugo Chavez, without any mention of criticism. Granted the book was written in 2008, but still I expected more balance even if I agree with the underlying premise Klein is arguing.Still, this was again a thought-provoking read and, maybe because of the current events we are living through, I loved that the book ended on the message (paraphrasing here): What can we do right now to start to bring our community back in spite of the government, not because of it?
    • 4/5
      We live in scary times, as capitalists find new ways to profit from labor and land.
    • 5/5
      A public policy book belonging to the horror genre, Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine is an impassioned chronicle of greedy, violent misbehavior. Her purpose is to publicize and dissect the “Chicago School experiment,” by which she means the economic “shock” therapy promulgated and supported by the school of economic thought that she associates most with 1976 Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. She sums up her thesis by writing that “the entire thirty-year history of the Chicago School experiment has been one of mass corruption and corporatist collusion between security states and large corporations.” No pulling punches there. I read Friedman’s Free to Choose long ago. It was an easy introduction to his notions and influenced my thinking. That title, Free to Choose, represents a colossal irony if we accept Klein’s accusations of the way freedom and citizen welfare are sacrificed to achieve national economic and political transformation through the principles and prescriptions she attributes to the Chicago School. But, should we accept her accusations?Four prominent demands of the Chicago School are as follows: (1) Privatization of public enterprises and resources;(2) Economic deregulation;(3) Tax cuts;(4) Deep cuts in government spending.While people should debate the merits of these demands, I do not see anything inherently immoral about them if the efforts to implement them are done peaceably with consent.However, as implemented in nations such as Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, South Africa, China, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, Klein’s version of the Chicago School’s Friedmanomics takes on the garb of some kind of ghoulish Freakishnomics. Her intent is to show that in these countries it meant all or some of the following:(1) Overthrow of the ruling government, often by violence, even when that government was legally elected by voters in accord with their country’s constitution;(2) Capture and torture of opponents or presumed opponents;(3) Terrorist acts against the citizenry, including murder;(4) Enrichment of the richest classes of the nation, with some high bureaucrats also becoming plutocrats themselves;(5) Foreign takeover of profitable businesses and gaining of the right to exploit the nation’s natural resources;(6) Impoverishment of workers;(7) Discontinuation or diminishment of many social services;(8) “Debt bomb” detonation to conquer the willfulness of governments resisting Chicago School policies.All these actions, among other lapses of polite behavior, to be carried out in the interest of multinational corporations. How about that for an eight-fold path? Feeling the Zen? This isn’t a program citizens of conscience normally ask their leaders to pursue, so there’s one other crucial element: Sell it as an absolute necessity to the preserving of freedom, peace, prosperity, and security. But also, if doable, skimp on the selling and establish the package by coercive force brought with such speed and rude brutality that it will seem a reckoning brought forth by the gods. SHOCK, baby!Why, one might as well revert to Aristotle’s contention in the Politics that “hunting ought to be practiced—not only against animals, but also against human beings who are intended by nature to be ruled by others and refuse to obey that intention—because war of this order is naturally just.” Klein might say that’s exactly what has happened.The question becomes how fair and correct her account is. For example, her reports of better economic outcomes in some countries with “managed” economies come across as supported by cherry-picked data, a common fault of those engaged in political persuasion. Suppose she has done this? Is it enough to justify rejecting her outrage and accepting the shocking eight-fold path she describes? Do her misjudgments about leaders such as Hugo Chavez wholly invalidate the critique? Prior political inclinations will do much to color how one responds to this book. It’s not perfect. Ambitious books, passionately argued, aren’t. To some readers it will feel like a defamation, which reaches its height in Klein’s account of the war in Iraq. It attempts to revolutionize some of our most confidently (complacently?) held ideas about U.S. and corporate behavior throughout the world. If you are ill-disposed to accepting Klein’s biases or theses, focusing on the acts she describes and asking, “IS THIS WHAT I’D WANT ANOTHER NATION TO DO TO MY OWN COUNTRY?” can still make The Shock Doctrine an informative, dynamic, even necessary reading experience.
    • 5/5
      This is an incredibly important book that connects a number of seemingly disparate events from the late 20th and early 21st centuries via an economic ideology underpinning them. I learned a hell of a lot about a bunch of historical events, in addition to the unifying narrative that Klein was drawing. The prose is refreshingly readable for a nonfiction book. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone else looking to understand what happened geopolitically in the last few decades and why right-wing economic policies appear to have gotten so popular worldwide.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely fascinating. You must read this book.
    • 4/5
      You don't need to read of Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic dystopias to get a taste of one possible future: instead just look back ten or fifteen years, to New Orleans post-Katrina, or Iraq post 9/11.The premise of this book is simultaneously horrifying, fascinating, and compelling. It's a sister work to “Hypernormalization,” Adam Curtis' 2016 documentary. Both tell the story of the ways that free-market fundamentalism actually doesn’t work, need to be reinforced with terrorist measures, and which governments continue to play make-believe with, putting up the facade of functionality.That said, it’s an oversimplification to say that disasters are only exploited by free-market ideologues. In ecology, people use model of forest-succession called the shifting mosaic. A wind storm will take out old-growth forest in one section, opening up the opportunity room for a different mix of species. During disruption is the only time to easily introduce new models, whatever their politics. The Transition Towns core premise is that industrial society is failing us, and it’s up to us to build local, resilient alternatives. It’s lack of mainstream adoption probably has to do with the fact that our economy hasn’t fallen apart badly enough yet for these new seedlings to fully sprout up through the cracks.
    • 5/5
      life changing
      this book os a wakeup call to evrryone
    • 4/5
      This book exposes the ideology of neoliberalism, the idea that government should be limited to the bare bones and that corporations should be completely unregulated, a school of thought promoted by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago.  The book begins with the story of CIA mind-washing experiments which attempted to erase the very self-identity of the subjects.  The shock doctrine applies these same actions (mostly metaphorically, but sometimes literally with interrogation and torture techniques) to entire communities and economies.  This begins with the overthrow of democratically-elected government in Chile and the installation of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was advised by Friedman's own trained "Chicago Boys."  The same policies pop up again in response to disasters - war, economic collapse, and natural disasters - where neoliberal policies are ready to go at the time when democratic processes are least likely to be followed. Klein examines how both Iraq and New Orleans were deliberately cleared of their past and memory to be remade in a neoliberal model, with much exploitation and corporate profits in the process.  This is a chilling and illuminating book.Favorite Passages:Communism may have collapsed without the firing of a single shot, but Chicago-style capitalism, it turned out, required a great deal of gunfire to defend itself.Recommended books:
    • 1/5
      Naomi Klein has achieved something incredible with this book; she's written something worse than No Logo.

      Full of glaring errors and blatant distortions (her take on Freidman's Tyranny of the Status Quo suggests she hasn't even read the blurb) the book shows no understanding at all of the economics it tries to talk about. It's like a prolonged lecture in football tactics from someone who does't understand the offside rule.

      The book suggests that 'Chicago School' economics 1) Is something homogeneous and 2) Replaced something which was working perfectly well. Neither is true.

      In the first place Freidman and Hayek disagreed strongly over both methodology and monetary theory. Klein doesn't understand monetary theory so its no shock she gets this so wrong but then why did she write about it?

      Secondly, at no point anywhere does Klein suggest there might have been a problem with the Keynesian paradigm the 'Chicago' paradigm replaced in economics and public policy. In fact, by the late 1970s, Keynesian economics was obviously failing very badly. People turned to the ideas of Freidman and co because the alternative wasn't working.

      And turn they did. Klein shows no understanding of British politics in the period suggesting that Margaret Thatcher was unpopular (she won three elections) and that the miners had widespread support. They never, in fact, at any stage had such support.

      In short, a good book if you have a prejudice towards liberal economics but look elsewhere for factual and informed analysis of the liberal revival of the last thirty years.
    • 4/5
      Disturbing, frustrating, enlightening, hope, no hope, and on and on. Naomi opens your eyes to so much greed and evil then gives you a sliver of hope at the end. The book left me wanting more, an update with the latest ongoings around the globe, but now with eyes wide open one can guess what is really going on and do I really need it in writing to see it. Probably not. Read this shortly after reading Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. Piketty provides the statistics that backs Klein's story, though I'm sure that wasn't Piketty's intention.
    • 5/5
      Naomi Klein isn’t a stylist. Her sentence at the opening of Chapter 12 (“The Capitalist ID”) is about as close as she gets to stylistic writing: “On the day I went to visit Jeffrey Sachs in October 2006, New York City was under a damp blanket of gray drizzle punctuated, every five paces or so, by a vibrant burst of red.”

      No, she’s not an English-language stylist. She’s a Canadian journalist. And a damned good one, at that! And one who’d put a lot of journalists — assuming they’d not simply been told to look the other way on the possible cause of a virtually worldwide financial crisis — to shame in papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, not to mention in magazines as august as The Atlantic. (Let’s not even mention the networks, shall we? They’re better at postulating on popular trends and telling doggie stories.)

      Could it be that the party (for many, though certainly not for all of us) here in these United States was just too long and too good from the end of WW II until now? Even Eisenhower — a conservative if there ever was one — publicly recognized the arrival of the military-industrial complex. Is this new brand of disaster capitalism really anything more than the “logical” evolution of that complex?

      I have a confession to make: I of course knew the name ‘Milton Friedman’ and something about his reputation; I also knew the reputation of the University of Chicago (albeit more for its History Department than for its Economics Department); I, myself, am a graduate of the Philosophy Department of Columbia University. All of this notwithstanding, I was absolutely ignorant of any of this economic shock treatment — from Chile and Argentina, to Poland and Russia, then on to Asia, to Iraq (where our behavior has been beyond despicable) and the Middle East, and back home again to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

      I owe Ms. Klein a humble vote of gratitude. And it was only thanks to a fellow Greek writer, whose own country is now on the verge of financial collapse, that I even found out about Ms. Klein’s book.

      Don’t make a comparable fool out of yourself through similar (and similarly unpardonable) ignorance. Buy this book and read it cover to cover! Yes, we’re talking history here; but we’re also talking current events — events that could bring not only the entire developing world to its knees, but also these hallowed United States and our gracious neighbor to the north. And all because of one man, one misbegotten ideology, one group of protégés, acolytes, disciples — and yes, I’ll say it — intellectual toadies known as ‘The Chicago Boys.’

      And the IMF and the World Bank, many of whose policy makers are obvious lackeys in the service of that same ‘School of Chicago’ ideology if not to something even more sinister? Pfff!

      One caveat to all of the above: I’ve never read the original works of Milton Friedman. Nor did I ever attend any of his classes while he was still alive. I trust Ms. Klein to have reported as accurately as she has documented. If not, shame on me for being so gullible and impressionable.

      And one last thing: we all know the wide gulf that exists between the original teachings of Jesus and the way Christianity, through various churches and sects, has chosen to interpret and propagate those teachings over the centuries. Would Jesus Christ call himself a Christian by today’s standards of Christianity? Karl Marx once famously said he was no Marxist. Would Milton Friedman, given the demonic evolution of his economic theory, still call himself a Friedmanite? I fear, given his comment in the Op Ed section of The Wall Street Journal as recently as September 15, 2005 (p. 410) that he would.

      The news in the concluding chapter (“Shock Wears Off: The Rise of People’s Reconstruction”) is good: all is not lost. Let’s hope that Ms. Klein’s optimism is not as much in error as my original ignorance. Let’s hope that society — and Rousseau’s original concept of the social contract — are not yet lost.

      RRB
      05/28/13
      Brooklyn, NY
    • 4/5
      My problem with The Shock Doctrine is a simple one – I agree with Naomi Klein. I agree, as any civilised person would, with her views on the use of torture. I share her distaste for the theories of Milton Friedman. And I’m right with her on the economic consequences apparently flowing from the mass adoption of the Chicago School’s theories as policy. But I’m deeply uncomfortable with books like this that reinforce my viewpoint. They tend to bypass your critical facilities and hit you straight in the ‘godammit I’m right!’ pleasure centres of the brain. There’ll be plenty of cheerleaders for Klein’s follow-up to No Logo, likely the same readers who saw her first book as a manifesto for that very reason. And there’ll be a smaller subsection of readers who support Chicago School theory who have precisely the opposite problem and are liable to have thrown the book across the room or towards the bin at some point in the second chapter.As a righteous kicking of the theories that have dominated the Western world for the past thirty years or so it’s glorious and overdue. Klein’s at her strongest when she points out how these ideas had no traction before they were imposed undemocratically, and always with painful consequences for the countries affected. She traces how the ideas spread from their first adoption by Pinochet in Chile, through to the IMF imposing them on nations as a consequence of asking for aid. Although it’s clearly flavoured against Friedman’s ‘shock doctrine’ it’s a fascinating history of how an idea can spread with or without popular demand, simply by having the right idea available to the right people at the right time. I’d be nodding along happily but for two points. The first, the most obvious, is the heavy handed torture metaphor. Klein draws a parallel between physical and economic torture, linking them explicitly by the actions of regimes using the Chicago School ideas. It’s an arresting opening and a blatant attempt to get the reader onside because how many civilised people could disagree about torture’s a terrible, unconscionable thing? Not me. But where you stand on Chicago School economics is an ideological thing, and this comes across as going straight for the reptile brain, to bypass thought. Klein’s on firmer ground when detailing the consequences of how those ideas affected economies and then the further reaching consequences (particularly with the outsourcing mania under the Bush regime). The other point is a minor factual one. Klein credits Guardian columnist Seamus Milne for background work on the Thatcherite reforms in Britain. It uses the Falklands War to fit into her conflict driven thesis. Unfortunately Milne must have had his ideological blinkers on when helping out with the detail, because the Falklands narrative, though predominant, is total bollocks. It’s a narrative supplied by a triumphant press of the 1980s which was overly sympathetic to Thatcher. It played a small role in helping her get re-elected, but the bald electoral facts tell another story. Thatcher lost support in the 1980 election, but her landslide victory was down to the split in the left wing vote caused by the formation of the SDP. The combined left wing vote was greater than the unsplit right wing vote. That’s what granted Thatcher’s government the political space to enact their ideas – being in the right place at the right time. With some little work it could be reconstructed to fit the narrative, one closer to Reagan’s adoption of the ideas in the US, but that Klein accepts received wisdom leads the reader to doubt where else she may have fudged details to fit the grand sweep.A fascinating read then, but a flawed one. Caveat lector!
    • 4/5
      The Shock Doctrine is an in-depth look at 'shock' and the idea that when people are most vulnerable, that is the best time for people/businesses/corporations/politicians to make drastic changes that will benefit the few rather than the masses.

      So, how do you take advantage of people when they are the most down?
      1. You need some kind of crisis--natural disaster (tsunami, hurricane, earthquake...anything!), political revolution, economic crisis...
      2. You need to have a plan of action BEFORE the disaster so that when it hits, you jump in with your plans when everyone else is still in shock. (HINT: This is a great opportunity to use the disaster for something you may have been trying ot do for a long time. Example: Are you upset that public schools aren't privatized, then wait for a hurricane, and rather than rebuild public schools, create charter schools....[New Orleans])
      3. Once the changes are made, have zero tolerance for protests, democractic voting on the issues or even questioning your plan. To achieve this, you can illegally arrest, detain, and torture people, kill them or even just make them disappear. For examples, see: Chile, Argentina, Guantanomo Bay, Russia. This step often involves the psychological shock as well--sensory deprivation, hallucinagens, disruption of food/sleep patterns (for more details on how to do this, check the U.S. CIA-funded research of Ewen Cameron, Canadian psychiatrist).
      4. When the economy tanks, thousands are out of jobs and without food, DON'T GIVE UP! You are almost your way to completely devastating a country/region/group. The key: MORE privitization! Let multinational companies buy up and take over whatever remaining public-sector jobs you have (probably laying off those workers in the process) and charging you more to do the same work (IF they even do it).
      5. Remember when protests start you must terrorize and shock the people into not protesting. Make them more afraid of what you will do to them than of what they want the most: autonomy, freedom, food and shelter.
      6. After a few decades, if the economy hasn't gotten better, change government types/parties, and blame whoever comes in, NOT your policies. The key here is to be strong and repetitive in your statements: YOU didn't cause massive hunger and poverty--the socialists did.
      7. At this point, you should have made your billions, go ahead and move on to the next crisis and repeat. No need to change up your strategy--it works all over the world repeatedly.

      Sound cynical? Perhaps unreal? Shocking? I agree. Klein uses a strong voice to show her disapproval of US funded economic strategies all over the world that mostly ended in the simple manner of the rich getting richer and more becoming poor. For all of the Shock and Awe that Klein writes of committed by the government, her book is also shocking. As a reader, I can't help but hurt for the people who first suffer a natural disaster, but then are hit again with policies aimed to cheat them out of their jobs, homes, and well being.

      Fascinating read...I just wish I could say it were fiction.
    • 3/5
      Phasenweise sehr interessantes Buch, auch sehr gut recherchiert, aber man wird das Gefühl nicht los, das die Autorin Ressentiments ggü. gewissen Institutionen hat. Zudem ist eine gewisse Naivität in der Sichtweise der Autorin zu spüren. Jeder Mensch weiß, das die Wirtschaft und das Kapital über unser Leben herrscht. Eine Überraschung ist das schon längst nicht mehr.