The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
What do Milton Friedman, Augusto Pinochet, and Iraq have in common? Naomi Klein offers a defiantly partisan deconstruction of Friedman's Chicago School of economics and its open embrace of natural and manmade crises (e.g., Hurricane Katrina, coups in Chile and other South American countries in...
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What do Milton Friedman, Augusto Pinochet, and Iraq have in common? Naomi Klein offers a defiantly partisan deconstruction of Friedman's Chicago School of economics and its open embrace of natural and manmade crises (e.g., Hurricane Katrina, coups in Chile and other South American countries in the '70s and '80s, Russia's communist implosion in the '90s, the U.S. occupation of Iraq) as key opportunities for its accolytes to swoop in, jolt a dazed populace with free market shock therapy, and quickly consolidate power while crushing dissent. If her reach seems sometimes to exceed her grasp -- she finds the electrical torture devices used by the juntas advised by Friedman's "Chicago Boys" a natural outgrowth of the advisers' economic shock doctrine -- she succeeds in showing how, in the age of globalization, free market precepts are being appropriated to build corporatist oligarchies that ride roughshod over our most cherished democratic ideals.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780676978018 (0676978010)
Publish date: July 29th 2008
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Pages no: 561
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Writing,
History,
Business,
Economics,
Journalism,
Culture,
Politics,
Philosophy,
Sociology,
Political Science,
Society
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 ...
I'm largely convinced by this book, though it does feel a bit thin overall, and more than once I found myself shying away from the alarmism that seems to run beneath it. Still, Klein has an awful lot of believable facts on her side; enough to paint the picture of a powerful group of people only too ...
What take me so long? It is my bad. This is a 5 stars book and a must read for those who want to understand how the system created poor, and how government could systematically oppressed and tortured unionists and activists under the guidance of Milton Friedman and his Chicago boys. This is a great ...
Klein spins an interesting yarn about the connection between capitalism, neoliberal politics and torture. Whether some of the details are true is up for discussion. Whether her thesis is an indictment of "disaster capitalism" or of plain old human nature is another big question.The connection betwee...
Brilliant!An exhaustive account of the dominating economic force over the past generation. Yes, we are bombarded about the wonders of 'Free-Trade' and 'Privatization' but 'Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' is a formidable missing voice among the din of adulation.Anyone willing to sel...
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