<i>The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism</i> by Naomi Klein

Taking a more comprehensive look at the global economy than she did in her first book, No Logo, which helped spur the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Naomi Klein exposes the latest frontier of neoliberalism: disaster capitalism.From the tsunami-swept shores of Sri Lanka to the flooded city of New Orleans to the war in Iraq, Klein examines how natural and humanproduced disasters have become virtual capitalist feeding frenzies.In The Shock Doctrine, Klein presents a scathing critique of the history of neoliberalism, which she contends has developed into the noxious phenomenon of disaster capitalism.Klein begins in Part 1 (Chapters 1 and 2) with a comparison between Ewen Cameron of McGill University and Milton Friedman.She likens Cameron's attempts to use electroshock therapy to cure mental disorders by deprogramming and reprogramming the human brain to Friedman's neoliberal project to deregulate and restructure economies.To be clear, Klein positions Friedman as a shock doctor that first tested his economic theory in the laboratory that Chile provided after the coup of 1973.In Part 2 (Chapters 3-5) Klein discusses the devastating effects of neoliberalization in Chile and Argentina and how state terrorism was an integral part of its spread and implementation.In a rather sequential fashion, in Parts 3 and 4 (Chapters 6-13) Klein presents the formidable advance of neoliberalism through the United Kingdom, Bolivia, Poland, China, South Africa and Russia.Parts 5-7 (Chapters 14-21) are devoted to the move towards war and natural disasters as opportunities for capital accumulation, what she calls "disaster capitalism".In the case of the war on Iraq, Klein posits that the privatization of Iraqi assets and the United States military have amounted to nothing short of the plundering of both the occupied and occupying countries.Klein concludes with a review of some of the movements that are pushing back against neoliberalism, suggesting that the experience of neoliberal shocks has produced a level of desensitization that allows popular movements to more effectively resist neoliberalism.Though in some ways difficult to narrow down in the book, "the shock doctrine", as Klein uses it, is the strategy of using shocks to institute and enforce neoliberal economic policy.The shock doctrine generally follows three phases of shock.The first is a shock that allows neoliberalism to become policy.The reason shocks have been essential for neoliberalization is because neoliberal policies are unpopular and can only be forced through during a severe crisis.This occurs because during a crisis people put greater trust in authority or are disoriented to the extent that they are unable to react properly to challenges to their economic well-being.Central to Klein's thesis is the notion that democracy and neoliberalism are antithetical.Klein calls crises "democracy-free zones-gaps in politics as usual when the need for consent and consensus do not seem to apply".Once instituted, neoliberal policies cause a second shock by effectively shifting wealth from the poor to the rich,

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