When I was handed The Shock Doctrine by a fellow colleague, I wasn't expecting
to read it right away. I had just seen Amazing Grace and was in the process of
learning more about modern day slavery, being very curious as to why slavery still
exists in the world. But when I got home with my stack of slavery books, this red
and white cover with its “shocking” title was staring me in the face. I couldn't
resist. Maybe it was the fact I'm Canadian and couldn't resist something that's red
and white. And maybe it was the words themselves calling to me. To be honest,
Naomi Klein's thesis is simple - “This book challenges the central and most
cherished claim in the official story – that the triumph of deregulated capitalism
has been born of freedom, that unfettered free markets go hand in hand with
democracy. Instead I will show that this fundamentalist form of capitalism has
consistently been midwifed by the most brutal forms of coercion, inflicted on the
collective body politic as well as countless individual bodies. The history of the
Klein's first task is to show us the essence of shock, and where the modern form
to cure his patients of their problems, he would “unmake” them, reverting them
back to a childlike state, and then begin to remake them in the order that he saw
fit.1
Cameron's theory was that in order to unmake a person's brain, a series of shocks
and place (eg. inconsistent meal times, inconsistent lighting and darkness), drugs,
and electro therapy. Indeed, his shocks did reduce his patients to a childlike state.
The interesting fact is that none of them ever became better afterwards than
and links with the CIA finally broke in a scandal, it was clear that “the CIA and
Ewen Cameron had recklessly shattered lives with their experiments for no good
reason – the research appeared useless.” (p.42). But the CIA was more interested
George Bush as “a hero of freedom” (May 9, 2002 – Eisenhower Executive Office Building).
is to say what a remaking should look like? In his remaking Cameron played the
same tapes over and over again. But on what grounds did he choose what the
tapes said?
government services. Privatized government companies would be bought up by
the “free market”. The free market would determine its own prices, and the
shrinking of government services would be taken up, again, by the free market.
The only problem, and it's a rather large one, is that the free market is almost
Throughout his extensive career, Friedman and/or his ideas helped to push the
shows, he was a utopic visionary in regards to his theories, but where they led
and who used them was a different story. Klein quotes Eduardo Galeano on this
point:
“The Theories of Milton Friedman gave him the Nobel Prize. They gave Chile
Pinochet.”
Allende and the freely elected socialist government of Chile. He then proceeded to
arrest around 13 500 civilians. Thousands ended up in two main football stadiums,
which became places of death (p.89). Hundreds were executed, and their bodies
The Chicago Boys2, which Bush mentioned in his speech about Friedman, worked
2 The Chicago Boys were a group of about 25 young Chilean economists who trained at the University of Chicago under
feverishly right after the coup to get a long economic document to the military
philosophy may not be evil in and of itself, but it seems that wherever in the world
shocks such as torture, to make them happen, because as Klein shows, the
people, normal everyday human people, will not put up with them.
The pattern was repeated in several other South American Countries during this
time – Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina. White American men were known to show up in
torture rooms, helping the torturers with specific techniques. Chicago trained
economists (More Chicago Boys, Friedmanites) were in the back rooms of each
new government, helping to push forward Friedman's tenets. And in each country,
the poor grew poorer, unemployment was rampant, and money lined the pockets
of the rich and those in power. (p.102-110) One curious symbol of change was in
Argentina, where the Ford Falcon was used by the new government to pick people
The philosophy is simple: open the markets up, and within time, “the 'natural'
laws of economics would rediscover their equilibrium.” (p.92). This didn't happen.
In 1974, inflation in Chile reached 375 percent, twice what it had been under
Allende. Local businesses closed, unemployment hit an all time high, and hunger
became rampant. The experiment was a disaster. The remaking, again, didn't
Milton Friedman.
work. But not according to present day President Bush, or Friedman.
Klein, throughout the rest of the book, shows how the shock doctrine has been
used again and again the world over during the last 40 years3.
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela and the ANC won the political war, but lost the
economic one as laws were penned in the background that “pinned down the
limbs of the new government” (p.244). They had the state, but no power.(p.243)
Some privatized companies were even bought with South Africa's own money.
In Poland, Solidarity won the election, but quickly succumbed to Chicago School
economic policies as well. “Now in the grip of Chicago School economists, the IMF
and the U.S. treasury saw Poland's problems through the prism of the shock
disorientation of a rapid regime change, meant that Poland was in the perfect
In Russia, Yeltsin privatized almost the whole country, lining the pockets of the few
elite.()
In the coasts of the tsunami of 2004, people were moved off of their homelands
for many bogus reasons, only to find that huge resorts had been built up where
they used to live. As well, they now had to move their fishing boats a mile or more
3 Klein does not mention other ones that go back even farther. For example, Honduras in 1910, and Guatemala in 1950,
have succumbed to similar techniques in order to secure their resources for the corporations and governments that
economically took them over.
to go fishing. ()
And in Iraq, the Shock of all modern Shocks, everything was contracted out to
The Shock Doctrine has sickened me. I had heard rumours of this stuff before, but
now it is finally there in black and white. I have read about corporations before,
and have been struck with their greed. But it has become more than greed. Greed
has turned into blood; the issues have turned from green to red. When
governments, and in this book mainly the US government, speak one thing
(democracy, freedom, free markets, forces of good), and then behind the scenes
they take freely elected governments down and allow corporations to come in and
torture and kill people, and it is ALL done (let's not kid ourselves that any other
motives exist) in the name of Mammon and Power, greed has turned into blood. In
economist with the IMF, “To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I
have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of
what in my mind's eye is the blood of millions of starving peoples.... The blood is
so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up, too; it cakes all over me;
sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me
our continent, our buildings, our organizations, our markets, our democracy, our
fingers. The resources and money of country after country has been robbed and
innocent of it. Who votes for these automatons? Whose cultures did these bloody
Alexander the Greats come from? Who buys their stuff? Who allows themselves to
stadiums, and who buys the gossip magazines, plays the video games, tans their
to happen. Klein does offer a great deal of hope at the end, showing how people
in South America, If the issues of this book, and the people the world over that
they effect, do not make tears of sorrow and outrage well up in our eyes, then I
feel we are beyond hope. The issues are clear. They're right there in red and
white.