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The Shock Doctrine: a counterhistory of neoliberalism The Shock Doctrine: a counterhistory of neoliberalism Benedetto Vecchi
One thing is certain. Naomi Klein, following the success of Nologo, there has been hand over hand. He got back on the road, visiting or living for brief periods in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Chile, Bolivia, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Lebanon, Russia and, needless say, USA. Since these countries have sent reports and in developing countries has economists and activists interviewed for newspapers like The Guardian, The Nation or The New York Times. At the same time, has accumulated information on changes in neoliberalism after the attack on New York's World Trade Center September 11 six years ago. Over time, however, has matured in her conviction that the twentieth century capitalism had robust elements of continuity, but discontinuity with respect to elements of contemporary essays called the glorious thirty years, ie the period of economic and social development that followed World War II, which saw the rise in many countries, state regulatory presence in the economy and social life.
continuity of the welfare state came in its various national translations, and a relationship of domination of some countries towards other countries strong "weak" used precisely as laboratories for experimentation in economic policy powerful unbiased in the North would have found no little resistance by unions and political forces of the labor movement and other social movements. The challenge, however, was to outline the discontinuities. And it is precisely the discontinuities that focus the attention of Naomi Klein.
The constellation neoliberal
The result is a book that can be read as a contemporary neoliberalism counterhistory. Its title, Skock doctrine [The Shock Doctrine] introduced immediately in the thesis of the volume: the crisis-economic, social or political, and environmental catastrophes are used to introduce neoliberal reforms that have led to the demolition of the welfare state .
The book goes, for starters, in the heart of the Cold War. In those years, the future Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman begins to weave its fabric to build an intellectual network of researchers in favor of free market. It is a brilliant economist, but his proposals for the demolition of state intervention in society and the economy are too "extremist" in relation to what they do business and the U.S. government. However, with that, its research center receives funding from private foundations and government. Milton Friedman argues that the crisis and then can be used for "shock therapy" for free market.
Milton Friedman became the agit-prop of neoliberalism, while his disciples are sent into the world in proselytizing mission. Her recipes will eventually become policy programs in Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Venezuela. There is a small problem. Tions working with armored vehicles in the streets and systematic torture in prisons, while the number of missing becomes so high that even the American media can ignore it.
The part of the book about the sixties and seventies has history of coups and the systematic use of violence against political opponents, and may seem like a deja vu for long-known stories. But Naomi Klein presented as the first crisis of neoliberalism. Chile, Argentina and Paraguay are laboratories in which enriched many U.S. multinationals, which are allowed to take over many raw materials and new markets for their products. A sort of primitive accumulation renewed delocalized outside national borders. So it is worth funding, in concert with Washington, the state terrorism in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is precisely in this period that the intellectual network woven by Friedman consolidates and extends the same time.
is impressive work done by Naomi Klein for the reconstruction of political careers, the bonds of friendship, business relations of men-of Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft to Sunday Cavallo, Michel Camdessus to Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz and the Bush family who move from one board of directors of any crime to the direction of a neoliberal think tank of senior positions in some government offices of the World Bank IMF.
The story told is so far known outside the U.S.. Naomi Klein knows, but is also aware that the U.S. is a story known or disclosed only for a minority of activists and radical intellectuals. Hence his work of classification of the information before entering the second wave have neoliberal, which has, like the first, an apostle. It is another economist, Jeffrey Sachs called and wants to prove that the free market, unlike what appeared to be the case in Latin America, is not incompatible with democracy. It is a true evangelist of democratic capitalism, "and sees the crash Soviet socialism and the best opportunity to reconcile democracy with the natural laws of business. Advise-and heard-to Poland Lech Walesa and Boris Yeltsin's Russia, a radical deregulation of their economies. His recipe is a flop, but at the same time his "shock therapy" is a valuable ally in an IMF economist now definitively linked yet refined the theories of Lord Maynard Keynes. The debt will be the winning weapon used by the neoliberals, who grant loans only on condition that completely deregulate the economy. It's called Washington consensus, are the corollary of "programs structural adjustment. "As before, the multinationals will be made in gold, but Sachs, like other evangelists of the free market", says what to do now is that all productive activities and social services run by the state be brought at auction, even at the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of jobs on the altar of international competitiveness. Poverty does not stop repeating, is a side effect however will eventually be cleared by the invisible hand market.
The "shock therapy" is nourished and marketing strategies, propaganda and falsification data, trying to prove that the free market is the only way to escape economic decline and mass poverty. But consensus has to be won at the polls, even if it can slow the pace of "reform."
voodoo policy
To remove this obstacle is a well-tested strategy for the war debt in Latin America: to create panic and then to press for the adoption of "therapy" economic neo-liberals. The World Bank and IMF then become supranational institutions adapted to the objective of limiting popular sovereignty and national governments to deprive any decisional autonomy. Economic programs are, therefore, made in Washington, but its implementation on the ground is ensured by political personnel "faithful to the line." Klein Nami documentary shows how even the Asian crisis of the nineties took center stage at the World Bank and IMF, knowing that orchestrated the financial crisis to demolish all state involvement in the economy. And when Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indochina and South Korea capitulated to the IMF, a "Chicago boy" wrote a column in the Financial Times paralleling the revolution of free market in Asia with a "second Berlin Wall fell."
In Latin America the situation is different. Dictatorships collapsed one after another and came to power many center-left coalitions. Is the era, says Naomi Klein, voodoo policy, characterized by Keynesian and subsequent electoral programs rigidly neoliberal economic policies.
The tangled skein that Naomi Klein patiently temple depicts shows not so much a business committee of the bourgeoisie, as a trust company whose business is emptying the status of any function, including the war. It is the birth of "corporate state", as defined by the author, where a narrow elite of a company goes public office without the slightest respect for liberal rules against conflict of interest. The "disaster capitalism" can only continue to renew the social insecurity. September 11 is, from this point of view, a godsend for the neoliberals. The "war on terror" becomes the rhetoric behind which to hide the sale of national defense to private firms and full control of oil.
With the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, warfare, ie the use of war to boost the economy, has risen to the system, because the war on terror is a war that not only involves the military, but to the entire society. Illuminating in this regard is the chapter devoted to Canadian journalist Israel, making the development of high-tech industry of security and the arrival of Jews from Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall two key interpretive-not-pass only a hypothesis of peace with the Palestinians to Ariel Sharon's fateful walk through the mosque compound that sparked the second Intifada. Refugees from Eastern Europe could replace Palestinian labor force at low cost, while high-tech companies could offer their products to the world, given that the war on terror is a war of Western civilization against its enemies.
The economy of the disaster
When Naomi Klein begins to analyze the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina and Tsunami disasters discovers that are used by the IMF mission creep, ie, undue expansion of a mission, in this case the public machine. The last bastions of the state as guarantor of coexistence undergo social attack. New Orleans has become the laboratory for the further privatization of state. Similarly, the Tsunami is used to transform some regions or even nations (Sri Lanka, Thailand and Maldives) in holiday clubs for the global elites.
This is narrated disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein, as it did in Nologo not want to build a theory of capitalist development. It is an excellent journalist and investigative reporter who always raises the right question: how to organize resistance to neoliberalism. It is true that his defense of the welfare state can seem naive, but when he begins to list what they do and how proposed social movements, his is a Keynesianism that opens doors to self-government by social movements and radical democracy.
Shock Doctrine is thus an ambitious book, because it aims to provide a map of "disaster capitalism." It's certainly a fresh reorganization of capitalism after the September 11 and begins to identify its strengths, the leaders that are emerging, their global aspirations. But it also identifies weaknesses. It is therefore useful to read a map, also prepared to resist the next wave of shock therapy to be fed to the next environmental catastrophe and the next stage of preventive war. O italianísimo announced and social spending cuts to offset the economic decline.
* Benedetto Vecchi is an Italian cultural critic who contributes regularly to the Italian communist daily Il Manifesto .
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