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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Audio CD – Abridged, September 18, 2007

by Naomi Klein (Author), Jennifer Wiltsie (Reader)

4.7 3,280 ratings

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In her ground-breaking 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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“A movement bible.” ―The New York Times on No Logo

“Klein is a sharp cultural critic and flawless storyteller. Her analysis is thorough and thoroughly engaging.” ―Newsweek.com on No Logo

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan Audio; Abridged edition (September 18, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1427200882
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1427200884
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.41 x 1.07 x 5.87 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,498,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,775 in Government & Business
- #3,569 in Globalization & Politics
- #23,029 in Books on CD

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4.7 3,280 ratings

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Naomi Klein

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Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and international and New York Times bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed books: How To Change Everything: The Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Earth and Each Other (2021), On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019), No Is Not Enough: Resisting the New Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (2017), This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and No Logo (2000). In 2018, she published The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On the Disaster Capitalists (2018) reprinted from her feature article for The Intercept with all royalties donated to Puerto Rican organization juntegente.org. Her new book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World will be published on September 12, 2023.

Naomi Klein is a columnist with The Guardian. She has also written regular columns for The Intercept (as Senior Contributing Writer), The Nation, and The Globe and Mail that were syndicated in major newspapers around the world by The New York Times Syndicate. She has been a contributing editor at Harper’s and Rolling Stone. She has reported from China for Rolling Stone, Standing Rock and Puerto Rico for The Intercept, Copenhagen (COP15) for The Nation, Buenos Aires for The Financial Times, and Iraq for Harper’s. Additionally, her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Globe and Mail, El Pais, L’Espresso, The New Statesman, Le Monde, among many other publications.

Naomi’s books have been published in over 35 languages. On Fire was a New York Times bestseller and was named a Best Climate Book by Fast Company magazine. No Is Not Enough was a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for the National Book Award. This Changes Everything won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and was nominated for multiple other awards as well as appearing on the New York Times bestseller list and a New York Times Book Review ‘100 Notable Books of the Year.’ The Shock Doctrine was published worldwide in 2007 and translated into over 25 languages. It won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing. It appeared on multiple ‘best of year’ lists including as a New York Times Critics’ Pick of the Year. Naomi Klein’s first book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies was translated into over 30 languages. The New York Times called it “a movement bible.” A tenth anniversary edition of No Logo was published worldwide in 2009. The Literary Review of Canada has named it one of the hundred most important Canadian books ever published. In 2016, The Guardian picked No Logo as one of the Top 100 Non Fiction books of all time. Time magazine also chose No Logo as one of the Top 100 Non-Fiction books published since 1923. A collection of her writing, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate was published in 2002.

She has received multiple honorary degrees and awards. In 2019 she was named one of the The Frederick Douglass 200, a project to honor the impact of 200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass. In 2014, the International Studies Association’s IPE Outstanding Activist-Scholar Award honoured her for her activism in alter-globalizations social movements and protests. Author of numerous books and articles, Naomi is one of the most important voices in the alter-globalizations movement.”

In 2015 she was awarded the Izzy (I.F. Stone) Award for Outstanding Independent Media and Journalism: “Few journalists today take on the big issues as comprehensively and fearlessly as Naomi Klein. She combines rigorous reporting, analysis, history and global scope into a package that not only identifies problems, but also illuminates successful activism and solutions. That goes for her groundbreaking book on climate change and for columns that brilliantly connect the dots – such as the intersection of climate justice and racial justice.”

In 2016 she was awarded Australia’s international award for peace, the Sydney Peace Prize for, “exposing the structural causes and responsibility for the climate crisis, for inspiring us to stand up locally, nationally and internationally to demand a new agenda for sharing the planet that respects human rights and equality, and for reminding us of the power of authentic democracy to achieve transformative change and justice.”

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John P. Jones III

Why things are the way they are...

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2010

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Naomi Klein has written an essential book that examines the ideological origins, and the methods of implementation, of the ideas which have been central to the global economic transformation of the last 40 years, which is often associated with terms such as "globalization," "free trade," and "unfettered free market capitalism." It is an immense and complex subject, and whose eyes do not begin to glaze over when the subject of GATT, or WTO talks is raised, but Klein has done a most impressive job of offering the reader an erudite and lucid exposition of this transformation. She has meticulously researched the subject, and has coupled that with interviews of some key actors in the transformational events. The book is accompanied by 75 pages of footnotes, a few of which I verified for accuracy.

Klein starts her work in an unlikely place: the basement of the Allan Memorial Institute at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It was there in the 1950's that Dr. Ewen Cameron, an American who was one time was president of the American Psychiatric Association, conducted experiments which were eventually funded by the CIA, on mentally-ill, and not so mentally-ill patients. Klein's interview with one of the survivors of Cameron's experiments was truly horrifying. Purportedly the CIA was funding such experiments "for a good cause," that is, to help captured American soldiers survive "brainwashing," which were conducted during the Korean War. In actuality, the CIA was to adopt many of the techniques that Cameron pioneered in its efforts to maintain "friendly" regimes throughout what was once called the Third World. The pictures of prisoners at Gitmo, with ear-mufflers and thick gloves, all in an effort to reduce sensory stimulus, are a direct result of Cameron's work. Electroshock therapy was also a central Cameron technique, and Klein uses an incisive epigraph from Ernest Hemingway, shortly before his suicide: "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient." Yes, the critical point is that none of this worked, despite all the pain inflicted.

The central theme of the book is about what Klein calls "the other doctor shock." She is referring to Milton Friedman, and the school of economic thought known as the Chicago school (since Friedman taught at the University of Chicago), with its three part formula of: deregulation, privatization and cutbacks. He has been one of the stellar and most successful proponents of the now all too widely accepted "government is bad; free markets are the best of all possible worlds" thesis. And he doesn't believe in gradual transformation; it must be traumatic in order to overcome "political" obstacles, which is shorthand for the will of the vast majority of the people, who will be harmed by his policies. Klein does not particularly make this point, but I kept thinking, is not what she is describing the flip side of Communism? A rigid ideology, promoted by devoted and unquestioning acolytes who deem deviation from the "party line" heresy, requiring a revolution to obtain its objectives, and which involves much short-term immediate pain coupled with a promise of a better life in the hazy future.

Klein devotes chapter after chapter in a veritable "tour-de-force" of the implementation of the Chicago school's economic policies. Each chapter is a brilliant summation of the transformational events in a number of countries throughout the world. Friedman's first chance to implement his "clean slate" policies was Chile, when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, and imposed General Pinochet's reign of terror on the country in 1973. For the Chicago school, the implementation of its policies must be made through non-democratic means, and usually accompanied by violence; a point Klein makes again and again. As Thomas Frank says in his What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America , it is the French revolution in reverse, with economic wealth becoming concentrated, the few reaping vast rewards, the vast majority losing. That objective is not accomplished democratically. Klein goes on to detail the implementation of these polices in the other countries of what she calls the "southern cone," that is, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia. She again selects a wonderful epigraph by Eduardo Galeano: "People were in prison so that prices could be free."

In the `80's, a partial implementation of Friedman's policies occurred in both the United States and Britain, under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher's policies were so unpopular with the electorate that she was sure to lose the election, but the "foreign adventure," the last gasp of empire jingoism, the Falklands War bailed her out. The author says that next step in the global transformation occurred with: "the colonization of the World Bank and the IMF by the Chicago School was a largely unspoken process, but it became official in 1989 when John Williamson unveiled what he called `the Washington Consensus'". The policies were thereby exported to Poland, Russia, and South Africa, each receiving its own chapter. The betrayal of the stated goals of the African National Congress, and the acceptance of the previous debt by the black-majority government, was particularly heart-breaking. The standard technique is to claim that the economic policies are not political, but technically and scientifically objective. Natural disasters, such as Katrina in New Orleans, and the tsunami in Sri Lanka, are likewise viewed as `opportunities' to "shock" the populace into accepting Chicago School doctrines, such as school privatization and fancy beach resorts. Klein also covers the economic "homeland security bubble" in the States, and does a brilliant job describing how these same policies were implemented in Iraq, a country with intermittent electric and water supplies, but a 15% flat tax rate was implemented, and constitutional changes were made so that it would be hard to reverse the "free market" policies, including selling off their oil reserves. The last chapter is devoted to the increasing resistance developing to such policies. Her book was completed prior to the economic melt-down in the United States in 2008, so, no doubt, it is greater now, but the political implementation of that discontent is still held in abeyance.

Klein's book has garnered numerous 1-star reviews; I've read them all, and could find very little of merit. Mainly they were the standard attacks from true-believer acolytes of the "magic" of the markets, despite the evidence, in particular of the last two years. Klein has written a remarkable, lucid book on why we are in the fix we are: Definitely 6-stars.

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lmt324

The Shock Doctrine: A Great Examination of the Role of Economics, Politics, and Globalization

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2010

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NOTE: this review only covers Part 1 - Part 5

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein surveys the rise of and subsequent use of the "shock doctrine" as a method of instilling neoliberal policies into the governments of various countries from Chile to Russia. She traces the birth of this doctrine, its relation to shock therapy, and the way countless economics, dictators, and other officials have attempted to craft a new world order that never went according to plan. With a definite bias, Naomi Klein makes no apologies for her views, yet as radical as some might interpret her to be, she presents a compelling view of this political and economic philosophy that certainly resonates with current events, particularly the earthquake that devastated Haiti earlier this year.

If there is one figure at the heart of Klein's narrative of neoliberal ideas it is Milton Friedman, the figurehead of neoliberalism, a man who counseled various foreign leaders in their attempt to implement the shock doctrine. The primary aim of the shock doctrine is to "shock" the economy of the country by drastically changing key policies that align with the neoliberal agenda. Most often, these times of drastic imbalance follow an uprising, coup, war, or the like. In this state, the citizens are already feeling a sense of distress and therefore, any additional shocks to the economy should not be a major issue. So, what Klein is attempting to do is to show that capitalism is not born of freedom and that "unfettered free markets go hand in hand with democracy" (pg. 22), but instead to challenge that "official story of capitalism" by demonstrating that capitalism, "has consistently been midwife by the most brutal forms of coercion, inflicted on the collective body politic as well as on the countless individual bodies" (pg. 23). Whether or not one subscribes to the beliefs of Naomi Klein, she does propose a very convincing look at the ways economics and political intertwine on a global scale.

Beginning with the links between shock therapy and the shock doctrine, Klein basically suggests they work the same, both are aimed at erasing a "memory" if you will, to create a clean slate. In shock therapy, a new set of behaviors may be imprinted, in the shock doctrine, a new set of economic policies is to be enacted, specifically neoliberal policies - free trade, deregulation, privatization, etc. The chapter on this relationship between the two actually works to shock the reader, to show how unscrupulous these doctors were in trying to treat their patients, and these same doctors were coincidentally enough government funded for the most part.

Without going into too much detail, subsequent chapter discussed the way the shock doctrine was executed (or attempted) in countries around the world; Klein uses Chile, Poland, South Africa, Russia, and China as prime examples. Each case follows a similar trajectory with a leader or faction in power that a certain cabal of insiders who wanted to shock the countries political and economic systems until they were replaced with neoliberal ideas, policies, and practices. In Chile, probably the best example from the book, a group of Chilean students taught at the University of Chicago (home to a neoliberal contingent of economists) formed a group called "The Chicago Boys," and these men infiltrated government positions and advised the military leaders who were planning a coup to force the president out of power. This scenario was repeated in several different incarnations around the world; Klein shows how governments from Communist to Democratic were all injected with a neoliberal agenda and how shocks in all the examined countries facilitated the changes that were to be necessarily to support a change. All cases, although very similar, are not always the same as the case of Russia and China illustrate. As these countries seemed to be transforming into democratic countries, underlying this adjustment was the shock doctrine, which was exercised differently than it was in the cases of the Latin American countries. Interestingly, as was the case in South Africa, and an example that stands out slightly, although Nelson Mandela and the ANC (African National Congress) came into power, their control over South Africa was more than show than an actuality. The men - white Afrikaners that had been in power for decades - continued to control the country's politics and economics behind the scene. But in all of these examples, the main point is that government coups, backhanding dealings, and other shady transactions were carried out to impose a new rule of law - that being neoliberalism.

Part Five and one of the most interesting and compelling sections deals with the shock doctrine in the United States. Here, Klein weaves together the conjunctures between all the Bush era players, Bush Jr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. and shows how each of these men had all the money in the world to gain from privatization efforts pre and post 9/11. The figures that Klein quotes Rumsfeld and Cheney making in their business ventures are mind boggling, and only reinforce the Bush administration's need to want to impose their own form of shock doctrine. What is most frightening about these figures is the example of Rumsfeld who was Chairman of Gilead Sciences, the company that patented Tamiflu. In other words, in any disaster where large quantities of Tamiflu were needed, and while people were suffering, Rumsfeld and the company would being doing financially well. Although this whole section was a little too "conspiracy theory" for my personal liking, Klein does you make one think more about the implications of those government officials being tied so closely to large for profit corporations.

Overall, The Shock Doctrine is well researched, clear, well written and most of all a very, very compelling read. If you agree with Klein's views, you will love this book, if you are more of the neoliberal and conservative variety, you will probably not enjoying reading it and will certainly disagree with Naomi Klein and what she has to say. Overall, I think no matter one's political or ideological leanings, The Shock Doctrine makes the point of how tied together we are in a globalized world. Globalization does not just affect politics, economics, culture, or society. It doesn't just affect material goods, but it influences the way we all live our lives in the twenty-first century. As many reviewers have stated already, this book is eye opening, yet it offers the hope that maybe if we all become a little more educated about what is going on in the world, we could do something more to change it to the way we see fit.

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Amazon Customer

Eye opener

Reviewed in Canada on April 17, 2024

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Excellent work, the whole forest not just the tree !!

Lucca Canizela De Camargo

Superb

Reviewed in Brazil on May 22, 2022

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Very informative book!

Brenda

Buen libro

Reviewed in Mexico on October 15, 2020

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Llego en tiempo y forma y el libro está muy bueno

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Apemantus

read this book

Reviewed in Spain on October 6, 2017

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simple advice: read it! and then start thinking about your life and the entire fabric of supposed 'modern civilisation' and your part in it. Shows the progression of neoliberalist free market capitalism and its deathtoll from the Cold War until today (Syria, Guantanàmo Bay, etc etc). Thinking about this also explains for example why there are Spanish soldiers in Syria now - are they REALLY there to 'protect you' from the 'evil threat of terrorism'???? Don't make me laugh: they're there to protect foreign investment interests - vultures picking the meat off the carcass of the country. By the way, Milton Friedman is one of the most evil men ever to have polluted the planet with his presence. If you disagree wtih this statement, or have no idea even who this repulsive piece of bacteria was, read chapters 2 -8 in this impeccably well-researched and documented book which outline his influence both theoretical and direct in South America in the 70s.(personal advisor to Pinochet, whose torture and mass murder techniques Fieldman condoned as 'necessary' to import his own twisted and sadistic economic system - privatising everything and selling off state assets for a song to foriegn investors, dismantling the welfare state thus eradicating state education, healthcare, public sector employment, job stability, subsidized housing and unemployment benefit etc etc etc - thereby destroying all the progress that Chile had achieved over the past decades in a single blow).

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Miklos Roth

the shock doctrine

Reviewed in Australia on July 29, 2022

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What a brilliant book about the imperialist doctrine of the US! The whole world would be a match better an honest, peaceful place without the Americans! Maybe some catastrophic natural disasters in America would help humanity!

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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Audio CD – Abridged, September 18, 2007

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