The Shock Doctrine

You might have read the piece in Salon the other day where John Dean laments the passing of the Republican Party as a positive, or, even, a non-damaging force in American life. The party he has known for forty years, and the party he says that his friends now know, is a hateful, entirely corrupt, and self-interested body composed of those who take revenge and those who fear having revenge taken upon them. Every current candidate for the presidency is "authoritarian" in an extreme and unAmerican way that Dean thinks would have in earlier decades been "corrected" by the political system, but the Republicans, according to Dean, have broken the political system precisely so that it won't correct them. Sounds like the financial markets, doesn't it?

Personally, I would have put things slightly differently. The Republican Party now seems to work like a gang, in which the most valued qualities in members are loyalty to the gang and the leader, obedience to authority, and violence toward outsiders. The gang is constantly having to prove its dominance, and so candidates for leadership vie with one another for the most tyrannical or violent rhetoric, rhetoric which simultaneously demonizes those who don't accept the authority of the gang and the leader and removes all rules and laws for the gang and the leader. No one is exempt from the wrath of the gang. In this case, the Republican party has now separated itself fairly clearly from the general American population, and as Americans support it less, they come to seem to the Republicans to be more and more the enemy. The far away enemy is one thing, in terms of threat (think Al Qaeda, Shiites, Sunnis) but the enemy close at hand is more threatening because their enmity is seen as a "betrayal."

I don't doubt Dean. I always thought that for a Republican, he had something of a conscience. What amazes me is that Republicans who are now exclaiming at what has happened to the Republican Party (and yes, I talked to my mother this morning) didn't see this coming. Everything, every value, that the Republicans have held up for my lifetime as desirable has been pointing us in this direction. As I've said before on the HuffPost, all of this is the necessary consequence of traditional Republican values, not an accidental byproduct. Or maybe I'll put it this way -- when you reject common humanity, value profits above people, practice sectarian religion, feel contempt for the choices of others, exalt wealth, conflate consumersim with citizenship, join exclusive clubs, daily practice unkindness rather than kindness, and develop theories, such as those of free market capitalism, that allow you to congratulate yourself morally for selfishness and short-sightedness, then being a gang member is in your future.

Speaking of Free Market Capitalism, John Dean should start reading Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine, which is being published next week, simultaneously in the US and in Britain. As Karl Marx pointed out, history and politics are not only psychological, they are also material. This week, the Guardian is running not only four excerpts from Klein's book, but also several commentaries both disagreeing and agreeing with her thesis. Her thesis is this (and if I am slightly inaccurate, blame me, not Naomi): In the fifties and sixties in the US, at least two lines of thought converged. One was about how to change people's minds without leaving marks and the other was about what was the best way of organizing a given economy. The first grew out of experiments in psychological torture (whoops, I mean electrocshock therapy) run by Ewen Cameron in the late 1940s. The theory was that patients could be rid of mental illnesses by "regressing" them to an infantile state, attaining a "clean slate" upon which new patterns of behavior and thought would be etched. Cameron used both electroshock and powerful drugs to attain his clean slate, having no actual knowledge of the chemistry of the brain or how it works -- in other words, he was operating in accordance with a metaphor. The result of Cameron's experiments, for the patients, was often considerable loss of short term and even long term memory and a subsequent lifelong feeling of "blankness" on the part of the patients (apparently, later refinements of electroshock techniques have mitigated these effects). In the 1950s, the CIA redirected these techniques toward torture of political opponents, allegedly to find out information, but really to test the techniques themselves (hello, Jose Padilla!).

At the same time, Milton Friedman was coming up with the idea that if only an economy could be purified of any kind of restraints on the free market (for example labor unions or socialized medicine or history), then the free market would be able to perfectly gauge the value of any type of good or service, and therefore an economy would balance itself, and, most importantly, inflation would be controlled (also, as you can see, a metaphor, or, perhaps, an extended analogy).

According to Klein, it soon became apparent that all powerful shocks to a system had a similar effect, whether the system was a human body or a national body, and this was to temporarily disable the system's defenses. The US government, the CIA, and the free market economists began to act on this insight, to collude in larger experiments. The first of these was the right wing coup, in Chile, led by Augusto Pinochet, in 1973. At the time, Chile had a functioning leftish government and economy, and the voters had already rejected Friedman's pure free market troika: privatization of government functions, an end to social spending, and deregulation.The new economy was dependent upon outside investors and highly profitable to them -- let's call that the allure of globalization. Pinochet set about instilling terror in the population (that's the shock therapy) using death squads, exemplary killings, and torture. Taking advantage of this, the economists installed the new free market way of doing things within days of the coup. But Friedman's ideas did not work -- inflation rose. In the eighties, the Chilean government tried again, this time by inducing a profound economic crash -- essentially impoverishing the populace in order to bring them to heel. Ultimately, the Chilean "miracle" (Friedman's term) did nothing for the population, but it did enrich the top ten per cent and put 45% below the poverty line. It turns out that as far as the economists were concerned, this was a good thing.

The Shock Doctrine traces what the US, the CIA, the economists, the Neocons, and the multinational corporations learned from the Chilean experiment and subsequent ones (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Poland, Russia, China, England) and finally makes its way to Iraq (this is a 590 page book, and the print is small). Essentially, they learned that a small economy is easier to "regress" than a large one, that the shock has to be brutal, and that the free market doesn't work as Friedman said it would (automatically assigning appropriate value), but that it sure does make a few people rich beyond their wildest dreams, and that these people were Friedman's (and his students') benefactors and paymasters. They also learned to lie lie lie in order to sell what amounts to a program of inhuman greed to voters who have other needs, wishes, and ideas.

For our purposes, the more interesting section of Klein's book is about Iraq, where she traveled in the first year after the invasion, and this section forms part of her series of posts at the Guardian. She believes that the Iraq War was intended to not only steal Iraqi oil, but also to impose a radical free market on an unwilling populace, and that that was what was behind the installation of Bremer as the capo of Iraqi reconstruction. She believes that, thanks to the resistance of the Iraqis and their deep resentment at being used and exploited by the Americans, this effort has failed. However, a parallel effort, to shock the US economy into absolute deregulation, privatization, and an end to social spending, has been and is succeeding. What this amounts to is the fleecing of the American taxpayer in order to enrich the war making industries. The byproduct, as in Chile, is the gutting of the rule of law and the American political system as we have known it. Why did Bush and Cheney go to war? Well, where do they get their fortunes? The Shock Doctrine works perfectly for them. As for that 45% below the poverty line, well, once the globalizing manufacturers exported the well-paying US jobs, then the globalizing financiers moved in and sold the newly impoverished working class a few sub-prime mortgages guaranteed to take whatever else they had. Then the financiers screamed for a bailout, and Bernanke gave it to them. The free market, you might say, is working perfectly now, at least according to its shock principles.

So, John Dean, stop wondering what happened to your fellow Republicans. They embarked, knowingly in many cases, unknowingly in some cases, with utter indifference in still other cases, upon the destruction of the common good. They began doing this in the Cold War and kept up with it when it turned out to benefit them economically. Some of them did this because they were fearful and aggressive by nature, and hurting those outside their own families and clubs felt good, or reassuring. Some did it for money. Some did it for "patriotism." Some did it for religion and some did it out of pure cussedness, but they did it, and they did it over time.

Klein ends her book on a hopeful note -- in many places such as Chile and Lebanon, the people have learned from their experiences -- they are cannier and more resistant to the shocks administered to them by Bushco and their own ruling classes. Having endured "Disaster Capitalism" for several decades, they understand their own self-interests better and aren't as easy to fool. I would like to be as hopeful. The question, as always, with Bush and Cheney, is how far are they willing to go? And, is anyone willing to stop them? From John Dean's article, it doesn't sound as though it is going to be the Republicans.

Comments

[madprophet]

If I am lucky, I will live to see something like the French Revolution. Throughout history, nations have risen up and toppled oppressive regimes.

In this case, you are no longer talking about an oppressive national government controlled by an aristocracy. We are talking about a global regime of 400 or 500 major companies, controlled by a few thousand people world-wide, working hand in hand with governments.

Ah, who am I kidding. Naomi Klein's book is too heavy a read for today's masses.
People are too interested in Paris Hilton's new hairstyle or Britney Spears' new legal problems to actually think about what governments and big business are doing to them, let alone act on what needs to be done to stop the destruction of the middle-class.

Guess I will just go along with the flow, and try to make enough money that I can retire to northern Ontario and fish all day, and avoid all news of the world.

[Bobzmcishl]

I read the review of "The Shock Doctrine" and it makes sense. Iraq was going to be re-made into a "free market capitalist" society without any of the government protections that the neocons hate. I'm surprised the Republican didn't put Larry Kudlow in charge rather than Bremer. But even Kudlow would have had a hard time working with 22 year olds to build a new free market capitalist infrastructure in Iraq. Kleins book is reinforced by earlier works "Fiasco" and "Emerald City", but those two books wrote off the Iraq experiments as Bush administration incompetence. What is illuminating is how unconcerned the Pentagon was over the missing 9 billion dollars that either went to unscrupulous U.S. contractors and/or Iraqi's who just saw their ship come in. This was money that came from the "frozen" Iraqi funds that we were holding while Sadamm was in power. This is money that belonged to the Iraqi people and which we just wasted. This is a story that needs a more thorough investigation but it won't happen with our media which is all to happy to continue buying in to the Bush spin on the facts. We can only hope that a strong Democrat president takes office on January 20, 2009 and breaks this cabal up.

[vzn]

on the subject of "economic warfare",
see also a paper I wrote in 2002 called
"fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism"

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wpawuwpma/0203005.htm

pay particular attn to the section analyzing the paper called "silent weapons for quiet wars" which seems to be a full description of shock economics described by klein.

the paper makes the case that mass money crises like currency devaluations may be a manifestation of what klein refers to as "disaster or shock economics"

the paper is endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

recent supporting material: "confessions of an economic hit man"

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/05/149254

Video, senator/pres candidate Dennis Kucinich
at last years 2005 Monetary Reform Conference

http://www.monetary.org/video/kucinich/win_broadband.wmv

money as debt video by Grignon

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

[codingguy]

Her book may well install in the language the term "disaster capitalism," which means the habit of corporations rushing into countries ravaged by war or other catastrophes to scoop up huge profits and reshape local economies. Klein applies it so promiscuously (New Orleans, Iraq, the Asian crisis) that it's hard to keep up with her thinking, but that never inhibits a good sloganeer.

Is there an alternative to disaster capitalism? Yes, Hezbollah. That's the same Party of God that expresses religious belief through terrorist bombings. Klein gives it a nice review. She doesn't claim it's perfect, and the idea of her submitting to Hezbollah discipline and living its kind of life is risible. Still, she thinks well of it.

She explains that Lebanon needed help with restoring infrastructure after the Israel-Hezbollah war last year. But money from the West came with strings attached, so many Lebanese were grateful when local, indigenous neighbourhood committees of Hezbollah turned up with generous grants of money and workers sensitive to local opinion. Klein gushes so enthusiastically about Hezbollah that she almost forgets to mention that, financially, it's a branch-plant of Iran. Finally, cornered by one point she can't ignore, she devotes seven words to it before rushing on to another attack on private capitalism. Her rule:When facts conflict with theory, change the subject.

robert.ful­ford@utoro­nto.ca

[codingguy]

Still, readers who tire of her hectoring tone have a pleasant surprise coming. At the end, she reverses course. With a start (well, almost a shock) we realize that Klein has changed her mind. Klein the Pessimist, describing a world laid waste by Chicago economics, turns into Klein the Optimist. In her happy ending, the Latin American masses come to life and populism challenges capitalism.

She likes co-operative ownership, so she tells us how well it's doing. An admirer of President Hugo Chavez, she informs us that he's spreading the co-op idea across Venezuela, to health clinics and other public services: "Rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services." At least in theory. Even Klein sees imperfections in the Chavez approach, and sees the need to hedge her bet. His critics consider these "initiatives" handouts and unfair subsidies -- what other countries call patronage. But here again, Klein moves on quickly, pointing out that, flawed or not, this system is better than turning everything over to Halliburton, like the Americans.

MORE COMING

[codingguy]

Instead, it was "shocked out of the way at key political junctures" -- and, when resistance was fierce, defeated violently, "rolled over by Pinochet's, Yeltsin's and Deng Xiaoping's tanks." Huh? Have those names ever appeared in the same sentence before? In 1973, Augusto Pinochet brought small-scale neo-fascism to Chile. In 1989, Deng Xiaoping defended the gigantic monolithic power of the Communist Party. In the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin led the break-up of the U.S.S.R.

But Klein implies that the people brutally defeated in Chile, China and Russia were social democrats, all probably holding NDP-type opinions. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps the students in Tiananmen Square hoisted that home-made variant of the Statue of Liberty as a plea for emergency assistance from the U.S. Marines and Micro-soft. Even now, as Klein said recently in a Maclean's interview, "I don't think we've even begun to come to terms with what's going on in China." Yet she knows what they were thinking 18 years ago.

If you can manage to read Klein, you need read no more. Learn her way of thinking and you'll not be required to think again. She delivers a packaged one-size-fits-all theory of history that shares just one attribute with Marxism: When you have absorbed Klein you will in future always know the answer before you know the question.

MORE COMING

[codingguy]

I posted the last 2 or 3 portions of this EXCELLENT critique by Robert Fulford, but only the first part made it through. In the other parts he provides lots of examples of why Naomi Klein's work is shoddy and superficial. I"m on the road now so i can't provide the rest myself, but you can find the entire article by googling Robert Fulford and Shock Doctrine. I will also try to repost the rest, but not sure i will succeed any better than the first time. chill out.

[lacewing]

Not only John Dean, but EVERYone should be reading Naomi Klein's book. IMHO she is one of the clearest and most focused progressive thinkers and speakers. I'm THRILLED to see that she will be on the Diane Rehm Show (NPR Talk) on Monday Sep 23. At last!!!

[Nommo]

Is it any wonder that the current front runner is the son of a mafia "enforcer" thug who did time in Sing Sing?

[elkabong]

I've always maintained that if they're not rich, the people they listen to and vote for laugh at them behind their backs.

[codingguy]

She likes co-operative ownership, so she tells us how well it's doing. An admirer of President Hugo Chavez, she informs us that he's spreading the co-op idea across Venezuela, to health clinics and other public services: "Rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services." At least in theory. Even Klein sees imperfections in the Chavez approach, and sees the need to hedge her bet. His critics consider these "initiatives" handouts and unfair subsidies -- what other countries call patronage. But here again, Klein moves on quickly, pointing out that, flawed or not, this system is better than turning everything over to Halliburton.
Her book may well install in the language the term "disaster capitalism," which means the habit of corporations rushing into countries ravaged by war or other catastrophes to scoop up huge profits and reshape local economies. Klein applies it so promiscuously (New Orleans, Iraq, the Asian crisis) that it's hard to keep up with her thinking, but that never inhibits a good sloganeer.
Is there an alternative to disaster capitalism? Yes, Hezbollah. Klein gives it a nice review. She doesn't claim it's perfect, and the idea of her submitting to Hezbollah discipline and living its kind of life is risible. Still, she thinks well of it.
She explains that Lebanon needed help with restoring infrastructure after the Israel-Hezbollah war last year. But money from the West came with strings attached, so many Lebanese were grateful when local, indigenous neighbourhood committees of Hezbollah turned up with generous grants of money and workers sensitive to local opinion. Klein gushes so enthusiastically about Hezbollah that she almost forgets to mention that, financially, it's a branch-plant of Iran. Finally, cornered by one point she can't ignore, she devotes seven words to it before rushing on to another attack on private capitalism. Her rule:When facts conflict with theory, change the subject.

[codingguy]

Instead, it was "shocked out of the way at key political junctures" -- and, when resistance was fierce, defeated violently, "rolled over by Pinochet's, Yeltsin's and Deng Xiaoping's tanks." Huh? Have those names ever appeared in the same sentence before? In 1973, Augusto Pinochet brought small-scale neo-fascism to Chile. In 1989, Deng Xiaoping defended the gigantic monolithic power of the Communist Party. In the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin led the break-up of the U.S.S.R.
But Klein implies that the people brutally defeated in Chile, China and Russia were social democrats, all probably holding NDP-type opinions. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps the students in Tiananmen Square hoisted that home-made variant of the Statue of Liberty as a plea for emergency assistance from the U.S. Marines and Micro-soft. Even now, as Klein said recently in a Maclean's interview, "I don't think we've even begun to come to terms with what's going on in China." Yet she knows what they were thinking 18 years ago.
If you can manage to read Klein, you need read no more. Learn her way of thinking and you'll not be required to think again. She delivers a packaged one-size-fits-all theory of history that shares just one attribute with Marxism: When you have absorbed Klein you will in future always know the answer before you know the question.
Still, readers who tire of her hectoring tone have a pleasant surprise coming. At the end, she reverses course. With a start (well, almost a shock) we realize that Klein has changed her mind. Klein the Pessimist, describing a world laid waste by Chicago economics, turns into Klein the Optimist. In her happy ending, the Latin American masses come to life and populism challenges capitalism.
MORE COMING

[codingguy]

Another take on "The Shock Doctrine"

Robert Fulford on Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”
A spectre is haunting global capitalism, the spectre of Naomi Klein. Wherever globalists wander, they find her standing in their way, sternly shaking her finger like a schoolteacher handing out bad marks. If supporters of free trade celebrate a success, like China, Klein calls it "corporatism" and reminds us that many millions of Chinese remain impoverished. When globalism fails, in Argentina or Indonesia, Klein quickly identifies the enemies of humanity, the "Chicago Boys," University of Chicago economists who destroy social democracy everywhere.
Economists will love her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Has any profession ever been so lavishly flattered? Economists believe they should run the world and now comes this super-industrious Toronto journalist with the news that they are already doing so.
The way she frames her views is at least as interesting as the views themselves. "Shock doctrine," for example, sticks in the mind even if no one understands it. It means everything and nothing. "Shock" refers, among many other things, to CIA-funded brainwashing experiments at McGill in the 1950s, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and any demand from the International Monetary Fund for payment of a loan.
Email to a friend Printer friendly
Font:
• *
• *
• *
• *
Klein writes with little sense of style and no pity for the poor reader. The Shock Doctrine requires that we hack through a thicket of self-contradictions and wild overstatements. For her, hyperbole is not a literary device, it's a way of life.
But she seems to believe (and who can call her wrong?) that if she moves fast enough, few will notice the flaws in her thinking. Within one sentence, she blissfully mashes together movements and political figures with little in common except her dislike of them.
She says democratic socialism was never defeated in political debate or elections.
MORE COMING

[morphizm]

Examples? Evidence? Anything else besides hollow insults with nothing to back them up? Do you guys even do your homework these days?

[wiseoldgranny]

I am so sick of the dems being portrayed as equal to repubs. Let's just review what thed Dems did not do:

The dems did not pull out of all of the world treaties that have taken 55 years (longer on some) to agree and ratify by bi-party congresses.

The dems did not take the labor and environmental regulations out of the 'free trade' deals.

The dems did not stop regulations of corporate labor, safety and environmental laws.

The dems did not lock (literally) the minority out of their own conferences.

The dems did not allow torture, openly and fight the passing of law against it.

The dems did not expose covert CIA agents and then lie about it.

The dems did not corrupt the Justice system.

The dems didn't start preemptive perpetual wars based on lies.

The dems did not sit back and watch thousands of Americans drown, starve, and become homeless without trying to save them, until it was too late.

At the ethics hearings, representatives of repub and dem 'think tanks', stated that they had never in their 20-30 years in public life had they ever seen such corruption.

People from both sides of the aisle are going public with the law breaking of this regime.

[jdcapshew]

A disclaimer here, I have read The Shock Doctrine and I work for the publisher of Naomi Klein's book. Jane Smiley's perceptive and amusing comparison of the Republican elite to a gang of thugs is right on target. At this point in time, the intelligent and thoughtful conservative and Republican moderates realize that they have been duped by a bunch of greedy authoritarians that only want more power and wealth over the rest of us here and those less fortunate around the world. I am hopeful that enough folks realize it by the 2008 elections because every single Republican candidate has a very powerful resemblance to both Bush & Cheney and we can't have another one of those wannabe Pinochets running our country into the ground.