Publisher Description
The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global “free market” has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term “disaster capitalism.” Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic “shock treatment,” losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman’s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement’s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq. At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
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“Groundbreaking work describing the partnership of Economics and Politics at its worst. Free market ideology was forced on countries that had just undergone major “shocks”, and the outcome was not positive, to say the least. Klein also shows how our failure to learn from the lessons of our past lead to the same “shock doctrine” and horrendous outcomes in the War in Iraq. Also, a condemnation of Jeffrey Sach’s past… I had no idea that he was a free-market zombie before more recently changing for the better.”
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Zach (5 out of 5 stars)
