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In this book “the Shock Doctrine”, the author (Klein) concentrates on the imperfections of neo-liberal economics. The thoroughly studied unconventional history, varying from various renowned economists (the likes of Milton Friedman) to a former president George Bush, brings the author’s argument to the present state of affairs.
With rousing reportage, Klein explains modes in which disasters whether natural or unnatural can allow a regime or a multinational organization to take advantage of the civilians shock/fright to put into practice business responsive policies.
These disasters are like the war in Iraq and hurricane Katrina among others. Klein’s book also centers upon former president Bush’s government and the age of neo-cons who chose profit over humanity in times of war and disasters. In this case the outcome is a provision of intellectual shield for the mainstreaming of anti-corporatist multitudes.
The Shock Doctrine also illustrates to us how capitalism needs conflicts to create innovation or more specifically what is termed as “de-territorialisation”, for the sole purpose of preventing the jamming of a countrys economic capability in a total paranoiac societal, political, financial, and cultural formation. The author clearly does recognize the association linking capitalism and violence.
Klein really brings forward the thought that warfare, aggression, safety, and insecurity are no more the means to which an ending to the withdrawal of excess value are achieved but rather a stop to the production of excess value itself.
If we try to make out what Klein’s theory of disaster-capitalism is all about, we find that capitalism does not only embark on colonial-adventure, and again as consequences of armed missions, for the extraction of surplus/excess significance from resourcefully wealthy nations, but also the exact creation, trial, and resolution fighting has turned out to be (the engine producing surplus/excess value).
This is to say, conflict is no more a means for supporting the end of withdrawal, but a course for generating reservoirs of excess value distinctively from the endowment created by the conventional practices of colonialism as well as exploitation.
There is great accuracy when speaking about systemic violence of capitalism. As shown by Klein, a lot of governments and organizations are investing in violent capitalism. It seems this kind of venture is the basis of upcoming new economies which make profits from individuals shock and despair.
These entail war, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, scarcity, business sanctions, marketplace crashes and other types of economical, financial and political catastrophes.
In the present world therefore, everything should be viewed in a different perspective: disasters are like IPOs, an opportunity to buy into a new business. Big companies like Lockheed Martin look like the true up and coming nations in the world today, and not some dinky nations.
They make colossal proceeds, grow earnings and are viewed through the new rose colored spectacles of violent/disaster capitalism. These are hot venture opportunities. Consequently, based on this assertion I fully agree with the author.
This book is Klein’s determined view at the economic account of the past 50 years plus a rise of free market fundamentalism all over the globe. Disaster-capitalism, as Klein puts it, is a brutal scheme which sometimes necessitates shock to work out. As shown by Klein, “like Pol Pot declaring that Cambodia under Khmer Rouge was like it was a year “0”, excessive capitalism likes blank slates” (Klein, 129)
As a result it frequently finds its openings after a crisis or a shock. For instance, Klein argues that, the Asian-Crisis in 1997 made way for the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to set up plans in this area and for the disposal/selloff of the countless state owned projects to Western-banks and multinational corporations.
Again as shown by Klein (329) “The 2004 tsunami enabled the government of Sri-Lanka to force the fishermen off beachfront property so it could be sold to hotel developers”. A war targeted at offering Iraq as a free- market was justified by the damage caused in the 9/11 attack.
In the first chapters of this book, the author makes a comparison of drastic capitalist economic policies to shock therapies done by psychiatrists. Klein interviewed Gail Kastner who was victimized by covert CIA experimentations in grilling techniques performed by a scientist (Ewen Cameron) in the 50s. The scientist’s idea was to employ electro-shock therapies for the sole purpose of breaking-down a patient.
Upon completion, and after de-patterning had been acquired, the patient could then be re-programmed; though after break-down the patients could not be re-built (Klein 68). The link Klein made with a crook CIA scientist is melodramatic and unpersuasive, but for the author of this book the bigger lessons are apparent. Klein asserts that, nations are indeed shocked by warfare, terrorist-attacks, coups and normal catastrophes.
She goes ahead and says that, “they are shocked again by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock-therapy. People who dare to resist are shocked for a third time, by police, soldiers and prison interrogators” (Klein 352)
In another part in the first chapters, the author gives an explanation of Milton Friedman who she referred to as another doctor shock. She shows Friedman’s wars for Latin American economists opinons. She asserts that:
“In the 1950s, as Cameron was conducting his experiments, the Chicago School was developing the ideas that would eclipse the theories of Raul Prebisch, an advocate of what today would be called the third way, and of other economists fashionable in Latin America at the time (Klein 56).
She proceeds to repeat Orlando Letelier the Chilean economists words, on “ the “inner harmony” that existed between the fear and awe that existed of Pinochets rule as well as its free-market policies” (Klein 57).
Letelier said that “Milton Friedman shared responsibility for the regime’s crimes, rejecting his argument that he was only offering “technical” advice” (Klein 57). A car bomb was used to assasinate Letelier in 1976 in Washington DC. It was planted by Pinochets elite police squad.
For the author, this man was only another person victimized by the “Chicago Boys” as she puts it, for the sole purpose of imposing free market capitalism in the area. She goes ahead and says that “ in the Southern-Cone, where modern capitalism was nutured, war on terrorism and related activities was the kind of warfare utilized to oppose all barriers that would lead to a new order”(Klein 58).
Klein is one of the most outspoken anti-globalization protesters as well as an accomplished author of a number of best sellers. She definitely gives a rich account of the political intrigues needed to power unpleasant economical policies on defying nations, and of the human-being toll.
She does paint an alarming representation of Hubris, on Friedman plus all those people who accepted his policies, at times to follow more corporatist/organizational objectives. She argues that, “it is striking to be reminded how many of the people involved in the Iraq war were involved earlier in other shameful episodes in United States foreign policy history” (Klein 522).
A distinctive line is expressed by the author diversifying the oppression in Latin America during the earlier years of the 70s upto the ones in Guantanamo Bay as well as Abu Ghraib prisons.
Klein was never an economist, she did journalism traveling the world finding out first-hand information on what actually took place. This entailed when Iraq was being privatized, the consequences of the Asian-tsunami, and the Polish changeover to capitalism as well as the years of the ruling African National Congress in Southern Africa.
This was after it did not succeed in pursuing the redistributionist strategies confined in their Freedom Charter (its declaration of core-principles). In the book, these parts are not very thrilling, but they are indeed very persuasive.
In South Africa’s case, Klein interviewed campaigners and other people and came up with no answer. South Africa was really trying to cut-off a civil-war in the prior years after ending the apartheid rule as the ANC did not completely comprehend the significance of economic policies.
The country thought it could scare off overseas investors; it then took-up the World Bank and IMF’S advice and instituted the suggested policies such as privatization, cut-backs expenses as well as labor suppleness among others. Evidently, this did not succed in changing of two key South African owned key companies plans, (South African Breweries and Anglo-American), of moving their global main offices to the city of London.
Averagely the growth-rate has been disappointingly as low as 5%, a little beneath the nations in East Asia that are following a different strategy. Lack of employment for the black population was at 48% while the number of persons below the poverty line had doubled to over 4 million since early 1994 (this was the year ANC took over power).
Klein was not a scholar and therefore could not be criticized as an academic. There are numerous places in the publication where she did oversimplification. But on the other hand, Friedman and the others also did the same. This was because they based their beliefs in the faultlessness of market economics on whichever model that took up faultless information, ideal competition, and faultless risk marketing.
Without reasonable doubt, the case opposing the policies looks more powerful than the one the author makes out. These policies were by no means based on concrete experiential and speculative foundations, and again as much as countless stipulations were being passed, scholastic specialists were illuminating on the limits of the markets, for example, at a time when information is flawed.
To some people, Klein’s findings may look like an indication of a massive conspiracy. This is the kind of conclusion she clearly disavows. It’s true that it is not schemes/conspiracies that ruin humanity but the chain of incorrect turns, unsuccessful policies, plus small and big grievances that tend to tally up.
Still, these choices are directed by superior mind sets. In this book, there is evidence beyond reasonable doubt that marketplace fundamentalists never esteemed the organizations that make the economy function properly, not to mention the broad communal fabric that civilization requires for prospering and thriving.
The author finishes off on an optimistic note. She describes all non-governmental institutions and advocates all over the globe who are trying to make a difference. In a synopsis Klein tells us that upheavals and disasters are a perfect recipe to the implementation of corporate friendly policies and business ventures.
Work Cited
Klein,Naoimi. The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt. 2007. Print.
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