The Shock Doctrine: Examining the Rise of Disaster Capitalism in the 21st Century

SUPER TUB: THIS BOOK MAKES ONE REALISE HOW THE WORLD IS BEING WRECKED BY COMMERCIAL INTERESTS

United Kingdom on Aug 23, 2023

JO SIFFERT: Este livro, publicado em 2007, é uma pancada no fígado, um chute no estômago, um dente arrancado, uma unha encravada.

Capítulo por capítulo, a jornalista e escritora canadense desnuda o assalto neoliberal à luz do dia, e como ele precisa de crises e/ou regimes autoritários para "passar a boiada" neoliberal e fazer a rapinagem de tudo para si, com os resultados de sempre: concentração de renda e desigualdade escalando, pobreza desenfreada, empregos destruídos, salários reais achatados, sindicatos enxotados, preços de tarifas de serviços essenciais subindo..

O livro é um grande (põe grande nisso: 590 páginas em letras miúdas!) conto de terror, escrito de maneira fluida e profissional, abordando basicamente, em capítulos separados, a desgraça neoliberal que assolou ( e ainda assola em grande parte!) Chile, Argentina, Uruguai, Brasil, África do Sul, Polônia, Rússia, Indonésia, Sri Lanka, Tailândia, Inglaterra de Margaret Thatcher, New Orleans após o Katrina, Israel (este o capítulo mais chato).

O filme se repete em cada capítulo (ao ponto de, chegando perro do final do livro, já fica cansativo), com os poderosos usando sempre os mesmo...

Brazil on Jun 25, 2022

Freh: The Shock Doctrine Book Review

The author strikes at the heart of market fundamentalists’ claim that freedom and democracy are the hallmarks of deregulated capitalism. Instead, she presents market fundamentalism as a far reaching ideology that has some surprising similarities to Twentieth Century communism. These include a strategy for world-wide dissemination, implementation by extensive coercive violence in much of the world, and marked indifference to suffering imposed undemocratically on the masses. But unlike communism, market fundamentalism is presented as a cynical war by the rich against the middle class and poor that inevitably leads to extreme concentration of riches in the hands of the few who can then capture government to perpetuate their dominance.

The rise of the modern version of market fundamentalism began in the 1950s with Milton Friedman and others at the Chicago School of Economics. This was a counterrevolution to the successful Keynesian mixed economies of the time that relied on markets for growth but employed government regulation and taxation to counter market excesses, failures, and inequalities. The Chicago School regarded these government...

United States on Jun 15, 2017

Gerhard Mersmann: Wer sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten immer wieder über das Auftreten der Weltbank oder des IMF aufregen konnte, wenn irgendwo auf der Welt eine Katastrophe eingetreten war und die Agenten dieser Institutionen zwar einerseits mit viel Geld, aber andererseits mit einem absurden Forderungskatalog um die Ecke kamen, der wird sich gleich nicht mehr wundern, warum dieses so war und so ist. Es zieht sich wie ein roter Faden durch die aktuellen Krisen der Menschheit, egal ob es Erdbeben oder Tsunamis, politische Umstürze, Kriege oder Wirtschaftskrisen sind. Der organisierte Weltkapitalismus geht stets mit einem Besteck der Re-Organisation vor, das im eigenen Hause entwickelt wurde und seither Anwendung findet.

Die kanadische Journalistin Naomi Klein - ihre Eltern verließen aus Protest gegen den Vietnam-Krieg die USA - hat das System des Wiederaufbaus nach Katastrophen untersucht. In ihrem lesenswerten Buch The Shock Doctrine hat sie den Guru der radikalen Marktwirtschaft sehr schnell lokalisiert. Es war der Chef der Chicago School of Economics Milton Friedman, der mit seinen radikalen markttheoretischen Schriften zunächst in den USA kaum jemanden begeistern konnte, der aber in...

Germany on Apr 13, 2014

David M. Nataf: Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" is a journalistic tour de force. Over nearly 600 pages of text, she traces the rise and implementation of neo-liberal economic ideology in many times and places: 1960s Indonesia under Suharto's coup and his allies in the Berkeley Mafia, in the Southern Cone in the 1970s and in particular in Pinochet's Chile, in Brazil, in Thatcher's UK, 1980s Bolivia, in China following Tiannamen, in Germany, Poland and Russia following the collapse of communism, in South Africa following the fall of Apartheid, in the Asian financial crisis, in post-9/11 USA with the homeland security bubble, in post-9/11 Israel with the same homeland security bubble, in the Iraq war, in New Orleans following Katrina, and in places like Sri Lanka that were victims of the 2005 Tsunami. The cases that get the most attention are Pinochet's Chile, Russia under Yeltsin and Iraq under the USA. As the book was put out in 2007, it does not include the current American financial crisis, it does say later on that the USA is headed toward economic collapse, something Klein might wish she had elaborated on.

The narrative, which is primarily descriptive...

United States on Jun 21, 2010

Francisca: The way I know whether theories are true or not is by testing them against my perception of the world and what I was suspecting already. Having been in this world for quite a number of years I often use my life experience in order to test all kinds of theories. This book gave me a lot of the answers I was looking for, showed me that what I suspected had been happening in the world for many years is true. I can't imagine how some people can say that Naomi Klein's theories are all rubbish.... but well, if you don't want to see the world as it really is (and it is scary..... I will give you that much) then denying what has been going on is the best way to protect your beliefs. I had never been able to understand how life seems to have become one disaster after the other, how misery never seems to end, even in developed, more well off countries, how many countries only talk about deficit, about hard measures, recessions, but things never seem to get better and if they do it is only temporary because the next disaster always seems to be around the corner. Don't people see that? If they don't they don't live in the same world I do! And Naomi Klein is right, people can take their destiny...

France on May 02, 2010

Mr. Duncan Macfarlane: This book develops theories of the connection between violence or disasters and the exercise of undemocratic power, following on from where victims of torture and dictatorship, such as Orlando Letelier, began.

Klein not only employs an analogy between torture of individuals by repressive governments and economic free market "shock therapy" of whole societies but shows how the two have often been part of the same process, with mass torture and undemocratic actions being used to push through economic "reforms" which impoverish the majority for the benefit of a minority.

The CIA's backing for brutal torture methods developed by funding a psychologist who seems from the description to have been insane or utterly detached from reality - and who practised his methods of "curing" his patients through sensory deprivation and electroshock are one of the most shocking parts of the book.

She shows how the Chicago school of economics is so harmful to the interests of the majority (with many starving or dying due to a lack of clean water or medical care as a result of this type of economic policy) that it can only be implemented by dictatorship, severe repression and...

United Kingdom on Nov 21, 2007