The shock doctrine - Page 3

On December 05 2009 04:02 Biff The Understudy wrote:

If you knew how happy I am to read something like that here, you would feel like some kind of angel.

On December 05 2009 04:28 .risingdragoon wrote:

isn't that common knowledge? hiring and firing based on profit margin, growth by acquisition followed by reorganization - these aren't benevolent, humanist things.

On December 05 2009 04:28 .risingdragoon wrote:

isn't that common knowledge? hiring and firing based on profit margin, growth by acquisition followed by reorganization - these aren't benevolent, humanist things.

On December 05 2009 01:22 Emon_ wrote:


Naomi Klein's response:
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/09/response-attacks

On December 05 2009 04:31 Biff The Understudy wrote:

If it was common knowledge, there would be two categories of people: cynical bastards and marxists.

On December 05 2009 04:27 freelander wrote:


i will download it and read it.

On December 04 2009 20:30 Liquid_Turbo wrote:
Forget it. Trying to get people to read a book is impossible in this day and age. Guarentee almost no one will go and read the book because of this thread.

Then the typical posts flamewar begins, with each side defending their opinion and claiming the idiocy of the other side.

On December 05 2009 04:44 .risingdragoon wrote:

so what are you? libertarian anarchist?

On December 05 2009 04:33 koreasilver wrote:

There is much more than just that.

So in a way, Palin was the last clear expression of capitalism-as-usual before everything went south. That's quite helpful because she showed us—in that plainspoken, down-homey way of hers—the trajectory the U.S. economy was on before its current meltdown. By offering us this glimpse of a future, one narrowly avoided, Palin provides us with an opportunity to ask a core question: Do we want to go there? Do we want to save that pre-crisis system, get it back to where it was last September? Or do we want to use this crisis, and the electoral mandate for serious change delivered by the last election, to radically transform that system? We need to get clear on our answer now because we haven’t had the potent combination of a serious crisis and a clear progressive democratic mandate for change since the 1930s. We use this opportunity, or we lose it. ~Naomi Klein

One way in which Naomi Klein can blame free market liberals for everything that goes wrong in the world is that she confuses neo-liberalism/libertarianism with neoconservatism and with corporatism. Now she defends herself:

"I never said Friedman was a 'neo-conservative'"

This is another excellent example of how Klein works. That's right, she only wrote things like this:

"Only since the mid-nineties has the intellectual movement, led by the right-wing think-tanks with which [Milton] Friedman had long associations—Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute—called itself 'neoconservative,'" (p. 17)

"Friedman … laid out what … would form the economic agenda of the neoconservative movement" (p. 56)

"the neocon movement — Friedmanite to its core" (p. 322)

"Friedman's intellectual heirs in the United States, the neocons" (p. 444)

Klein does everything to try to establish a connection in the readers' minds, to give the impression that Friedman/liberal economists/neoconservatives/corporations/the Bush administration are all part of one big free-market/corporatism/militarism-complex. And then she can take the worst thing one of them does and blame all the others for it. (Of course, the claim that the Cato Institute is in any way neoconservative, much less "calls itself 'neoconservative,'" is strikingly wrong, as a search of the Cato website for the word neoconservative — which would turn up items like this — would have easily confirmed.)

On December 05 2009 04:55 InToTheWannaB wrote:
I have not read the book, but from reading some of the links and responses I have a question. Does this book propose a alternative to a global free market? I mean sure free market capitalism has problems, but so does every economic system.

On December 05 2009 05:10 Caller wrote:

she does have a point where she talks about how we need to replace capitalism with "democracy," in the same way that michael moore did in his latest movie about "capitalism vs. democracy."


although, I'm still confused why people think capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive. If anything they are complements as one cannot exist without the other.

On December 05 2009 04:56 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Hum. No. Anticapitalist and Marxist I guess. Or "communist" if you prefer. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Stalinian or Trotskist has been. Communism has never existed. USSR, China, Cuba... etc... were/are bureaucratic State Capitalism. So if you call communism, as did Marx, a process towards universal emancipation, then you can call me communist.

On December 05 2009 05:13 Caller wrote:

From what I recall, this has got to be the best explanation of what communism is that I've seen in a long, long time. I approve. Well, I disagree with your political identity, but I approve that that is your definition of communism. Because that's what it was supposed to be. If only people actually can get through Marx.

On December 05 2009 05:13 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Hmmm.

I recommand you Jacques Rancière's "Hate of Democracy". I am pretty sure that it is translated, and he is a wonderful philosopher.