Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, Penguin 2007 (Swedish edition Ordfront 2007)
“Free Market” = Democracy, Freedom, Peace, Prosperity …
is supposed to be the equation of the zeitgeist. But, as Naomi Klein demonstrates in this book, her latest and by far the best, the truth is just the opposite, namely the title of this blog!
Klein demonstrates this by an enlightening survey of the economic history of the last 50 years which has seen the world increasingly gripped by the tentacles of “free market” fundamentalism.
The Shock Doctrine begins with a literal story of shock treatment by the Canadian doctor Ewen Cameron at McGill University, research sponsored by – who else? – the CIA! Cameron’s theory was that once “complete depatterning” had been achieved, the patients could be reprogrammed as desired. Klein intends to use this as a metaphor for how the “free market” ideology has proceeded time and again. This story is certainly revealing in showing that torture is as American as apple pie, so Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are worthy successors to a long tradition. However, for Klein’s main story, this shock treatment of her own is in danger of claiming her as the first victim, for it opens the door to “conspiracy theory” attacks. Indeed this is what two recent reviews – one by the Nobel prize winning economist turned public intellectual, Joseph Stoiglitz and the other in LRB – have picked on, while being otherwise appreciative of the book’s merits.
From Chile and Argentina to Iraq and Palestine, the “War on Terror” and back home in Katrina ravaged New Orleans, Klein paints a rich description of how catastrophes, natural and man made – have been the shock used to force unsavoury policies down the throats of unwilling victims.
A lot of this is done under the rhetoric of “free market” fundamentalism. The LRB reviewer takes Klein to task for not distinguishing between the “free market” ideas themselves and corporate misbehaviour. What he doesn’t seem to get is that the louder the proclamations are made about “free markets”, the easier it becomes to see that the use of the term has very little to do with the fantasises set out in Econ 101 textbooks.
One common pattern is the repeated appearance of Chicago school economists at the key points in these acts. “Conspiracy Theory” or just a coincidence? Are economists just disinterested scientists seeking the truth? Well, as Stiglitz writes, the economic policies being pushed “were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets”. Reading Klein’s book makes it clear that while Marx it may have been who uttered the famous line that “philosophers have only studied the world, the point however is to change it”, the ones who have taken it seriously and successfully are the Chicago Boys of Milton Friedman.
