Naomi Klein The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Considering the success of No Logo as the bible of the anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist university student, I thought it might be worth mentioning that Naomi Klein has published her third book.

From Publishers Weekly
The neo-liberal economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—that the Chicago School and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous—depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting—their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market reforms the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein (No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market shock therapies to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. (Sept.)
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I imagine it may be of interest to some forum members.

 

It's not bad, but as the review points out, she does create a bit of spin. Her intentions are noble, but the argument needed to be more considered. I think a lot of people have heard the whole "corporation/government exploitation" spiel too many times before. Holding governments and corporations accountable for their actions in absolutely necessary, but the fault of this kind of idelogy is that it comes off as simplistic and "black/white and good/evil". You can take something away from the book, but it's just not completely believable.