The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Book Review: A re-packaging of ideas expressed better elsewhere
Summary: 1 Stars
Like Malcolm Gladwell, Naomi Klein is expert in taking well-established, complex ideas and reducing and re-packaging them as if they were her own. Brilliant marketing, but not deep thinking. Still, a decent introduction to the concept, but if you want to know more, just google "creative destruction" or look up Friedrich Nietzsche, Mikhail Bakunin, or Joseph Schumpeter. Also Werner Sombart's War and Capitalism: "again out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises".Book Review: A real eye opener
Summary: 5 Stars
If you thought you knew about America, and it's foreign policy for the past 50 years, wait 'til you read this book. The idea that these things are being done, in our name, in places all over the world, is a crime. Pray, that under a new president the methods and tactics used by our country will cease, immediately. "The Shock Doctrine" will shock you. I promise.Book Review: A shock for America?
Summary: 5 Stars
Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" weaves together the systematic oppression of South American countries, the "help" given to Poland, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the current war in Iraq. Spotting the common threads in each instance, she then holds up the tsunami victims alongside the city of New Orleans to show the same benificiaries of government spending getting rich again. In every case, the parallel is drawn between the attempt to shape the client country's future and the medical technique of "shock therapy".
This is s a thick book but the reader intersted in trying to understand the rise of BLACKWATER, the peculiar hype around avian flu, and countless other quirks of disaster capitalism needs to read "The Shock Doctrine".
Book Review: A shocking book, a real eye-opener
Summary: 5 Stars
For people not familiar with the Chicago School's thesis, the book is a shock in itself. This is an extraordinary work of research and anaysis. Full of details, gives a complete picture of what it is happening in the economic and political sphere. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 simply reinforces her thesis. Capitalism in its contemporary form is a system that finds destruction and reconstruction as an effective way to maximize profits, political control and a pervasive form of survival.
The book shows that it is of the utmost importance to be acquainted with historical process in order to understand current trends.
However, it is a pity that the author did not develop the whole story of shock doctrine in the case of Mexico. She only makes a brief mention of it. Mexico, as a fundamental partner of US, enforced through NAFTA, has seen fundamental and destructive changes in its economy, with negative results for the majority of its population. What it is striking, and that diferentiates it from the rest of Latinamerican experiences, is that the process was undertaken under peaceful terms, thanks to a political party that monopolized power for 70 years, and also thanks to the rightist party that won the 2000 presidential elections. Fraud and corruption have been the main ingredients for the domination of the US southern neighbor.
Book Review: A thoroughly discredited heap of distortions
Summary: 1 Stars
Klein caters to her socialist audience with this work of astonishingly blatant distortions and falsehoods, knowing that it will sell to the true believers and that she'll get away with it. But don't look here for real scholarship. Her straw-man case against Friedman and free-markets it so blatantly distorted and fabricated that any gems of truth are lost in the mire.
Read the other one-star reviews for some details, and for a more thorough analysis read Johan Norberg's review in the October 2008 issue of Reason magazine, which shows how thoroughly Klein actually gets Friedman's position, and many facts about economics, exactly backward across the board. To accomplish that requires more than error, it indicates a deliberate attempt to deceive.