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Go Home Dead Left

BOOKS JULY 30, 2008

Dead Left

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

By Naomi Klein

(Metropolitan Books, 576 pp., $28)

It seems like a very long time—though in truth only a few years have passed—since the most sinister force on the planet that the left could imagine was Nike. In 2001, Time proclaimed that the anti-globalization movement had become the “defining cause” of a new generation, and that the spokesperson for the cause was the Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein. For puzzled outsiders grasping to understand why bands of youths had begun following the World Trade Organization wherever it went, brandishing oversize puppets and occasionally smashing up the local Starbucks, Klein was there to explain. She has always downplayed her place within the movement, but in fact her influence is as considerable as her press clippings proclaim. Her achievement, and it is no small feat, has been to revive economicism—and more grandiosely, materialism—as the central locus of left-wing politics.

From the time of Marx, and through the Depression, the left concerned itself primarily with economic inequality. The analysis of injustice in terms of class conflict and the forces of production was the canonical one. But the postwar boom—the authors of the Port Huron Statement famously described themselves as “bred in at least modest comfort”—turned the left's attention to foreign policy and national security in the Cold War, and to civil rights, and to feminism. By the 1980s, left-wing politics had withdrawn almost entirely into academia and other liberal enclaves, which it ruthlessly policed for any dissent from the verities of multiculturalist dogma and identity politics.

This evolution can be seen in Klein's own family. Her grandfather was a Marxist fired by Disney in 1941 for trying to organize animators. Her father fled the United States for Canada to avoid service in Vietnam, and joined Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her mother directed the anti-pornography film Not a Love Story. And Naomi Klein, like most campus leftists of the 1980s, directed her ideological energies toward the denouncing of various -isms within academia. (She later recalled, with admirable remorse, that she was known as “Miss P.C.”)

By the 1990s, Klein had come to realize, like some other campus activists, that off-campus there could be found worse depredations than the canonization of Shakespeare and other dead white males. And the new enemy turned out to be an old one—the original one, in fact: the corporations, and more generally capitalism. Klein set to work on her book No Logo, which appeared in 1999. That book wove together much of the new economic activism springing up in the precincts of academia into a withering anti-corporate manifesto. Her indictment had two main counts. The first was that many corporations profited from the cruel treatment of Third World labor. This observation was undeniable, and the publicizing of these evils has produced reforms of which activists can rightly be proud. The second charge was that corporations have encroached upon and monetized every aspect of modern life and culture. Klein wrote that she could envision a future “fascist state where we all salute the logo and have little opportunity for criticism because our newspapers, television stations, Internet servers, streets and retail spaces are all controlled by multinational corporate interests.” This aspect of her argument needed a bit more thinking through.

The distinctive thing about Klein's style was that it was very Old Left. She had a classic Marxist-materialist analysis, arguing that economic conditions, rather than bigotry or ideology, are what shape the world. Her interest in culture and in actually existing life under capitalism was somewhat derivative of the Frankfurt School, though not as intellectually sophisticated. Yet she managed to make the old notions feel new, and to capture the ethos of what was being called “the New New Left.” And her argument reflected the conviction of the new anti-globalization activists, the children of the “cultural left,” that they themselves—and not just workers in Nike factories abroad—were the victims of international corporations.

The 1990s was, for all the obvious reasons, an intensely materialistic era, and Klein came along just in time to make its booms and excesses into fodder for some sort of revival of classical Marxist analysis, which had fallen into disrepair and even into disrepute after the collapse of communism. The publication of No Logo serendipitously coincided with the sudden rise of street protests, and the book became a surprise international best-seller. The dearth of leaders in the diffuse anti-globalization cause meant that Naomi Klein became the Tom Hayden of the movement. The Times of London deemed her “probably the most influential person under the age of 35 in the world.” The National Post called her the “New Noam Chomsky," and the Guardian announced that “Naomi Klein might just be helping re-invent politics for a new generation.”

 

AND THEN CAME September 11. The Islamist attack on the World Trade Center may not have “changed everything,” as so many Orwell-wannabes declared, but it, and the ensuing war with secular Iraq, certainly changed the orientation of the left. The locus of evil in the world, even more than during the Cold War, was once again American military power and its use beyond our borders. The new American adversaries were not corporations but individuals—George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz. And they were motivated not by profit, but by ideology. This was not a problem that could be addressed by making the streets of Seattle run brown with Frappuccinos.

But Klein was intellectually unfazed. Rather than re-think the economicist premises of her recent radicalism, she set out to synthesize her old worldview with the post-9/11 world. “I felt it emotionally,” she told The New York Times, “before I understood it factually.” Doggedly connecting the dots, she discovered that the Iraq war was—guess what?—part of the same economic tissue that connected Nike and the World Trade Organization. Klein is nothing if not a totalistic thinker. Everything always adds up, and darkly. The left-wing labor economist Kim Phillips-Fein has written admiringly about Klein's role in seamlessly transforming the anti-globalization movement into the anti-imperialist movement:

In the wave of panicked reaction that followed the disaster, suddenly it seemed that the movement might disappear once more.... Almost alone among political journalists, Klein has devoted herself to writing about the war against Iraq as a political project driven by neoliberal ideology and economic interest—a natural extension of the corporate dominance of the 1990s, instead of a radical break.

So Klein went through the transition from intellectual guru of the movement against Starbucks to intellectual guru of the movement against the Pentagon, and came away as influential as ever. She remains the darling of the left in the United States, where she writes for The Nation and The Huffington Post, and abroad, where she is even more popular. A poll of readers of Prospect and Foreign Policy in 2005 ranked her eleventh on a list of the hundred most influential public intellectuals in the world. And we can see the culmination of her intellectual synthesis in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The reception accorded this book has been staggering. It was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for distinguished prizes, a favorite of “best book” lists in the newspapers. It has even been made into a short film. It has been reviewed favorably in The New York Times, and hyperbolically elsewhere. In These Times called it “The New Road to Serfdom”—that is, the left-wing equivalent of the classic right-wing Hayekian tract. The San Francisco Chronicle said it “may have revealed the master narrative of our time.” Not bad for a marginal dissenter.

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE has a single, uncomplicated explanation for everything that ails us. It identifies the fundamental driving force of the last three decades to be the worldwide spread of free-market absolutism as it was formulated by Milton Friedman and the department of economics at the University of Chicago. The free marketers, Klein argues, understand full well that the public does not support their policies, which she summarizes as “the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending.” And so they have decided that the free-market program can be implemented only when the public has been disoriented by wars, coups, natural disasters, and the like. The “shock doctrine” is the conservative plan to implement pro-corporate policies through the imposition and exploitation of mass trauma.

Klein cites a passage written by Friedman that “best summarizes the shock doctrine”:

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Much of the moral weight of Klein's indictment rests upon the morbid pleasure her subjects appear to take in the immiseration that permits their success. Klein observes that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Friedman described the ruin of the New Orleans school system thusly: “This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to radically reform the education system." On the very next page, she calls Friedman's plan “the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities.” The reader is meant to recall Friedman's use of the word “opportunity," and forget his use of the word “tragedy.” Reading Klein, you might almost conclude that Friedman devised the hurricane.

Klein repeatedly implies that there is something immoral about using crises to advance the right-wing agenda without explaining why this is so. After all, Friedman wanted to overhaul the New Orleans public education system because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that vouchers would work better. If you thought your house was horribly designed, and a tornado flattened it, would you rebuild it exactly as before?

The notion that crises create fertile terrain for political change, far from being a ghoulish doctrine unique to free-market radicals, is a banal and ideologically universal fact. (Indeed, it began its dubious modern career in the orbit of Marxism, where it was known as “sharpening the contradictions.”) Entrenched interests and public opinion tend to run against sweeping reform, good or bad, during times of peace and prosperity. Liberals could not have enacted the New Deal without the Great Depression. Communist revolutions have generally come about in the wake of wars. The liberal economist Victor R. Fuchs once wrote that “national health insurance will probably come to the United States in the wake of a major change in the political climate, the kind of change that often accompanies a war, a depression, or large-scale civil unrest.”

Fuchs did not mean that the public would never accept universal health insurance unless they had been brutalized into doing so. Nor was his observation evidence that he longed for disaster to befall the United States. Most American liberals today would admit that the sorry state of the American economy, foreign policy, and political life has created a golden opportunity for progressive reform. There is nothing odious about this. Yet Klein takes analogous observations from conservatives as proof that the right “prays for crisis the way drought-stricken farmers pray for rain.”

 

KLEIN LOCATES the beginnings of the shock doctrine in Chile, where in 1973 a military coup led by Pinochet displaced a democratically elected socialist government, and implemented economic policies urged upon him by Friedman and other Chicago School free-marketers. Chile offers the closest example of a case study that fits Klein's thesis. But even here the facts do not fit quite as tightly as she would like. Through most of her narrative, Klein depicts Pinochet as a pure puppet of Friedman. “For the first year and a half,” she writes, “Pinochet faithfully followed the Chicago rules.” But a half-dozen pages later, while explaining away the impressive economic growth that followed under Pinochet, she writes that “it's clear that Chile never was the laboratory of 'pure' free markets that its cheerleaders claimed.” More generally, she seems incapable of understanding that authoritarianism of the sort represented by Pinochet may be as moved by a lust for power as by a lust for profits. They are not the same phenomenon.

From that starting point, Klein proceeds to interpret most of the events of the last thirty years as repetitions of the same inexorable pattern: elites forcing laissez-faire policies upon unwilling citizens. Her interpretive method is an extremely crude sort of Marxist economicism. The Tiananmen Square uprising, in Klein's telling, was not a pro-democracy movement so much as an explosion of opposition to privatization, and Beijing crushed the movement not in the service of autocracy but in the service of neoliberalism. “It wasn't Communism [Deng] was protecting with his crackdown,” she writes, “but capitalism.”

Klein's model leaves little room for the non-economic varieties of conflict, such as ethnic or sectarian strife. “Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era,” she observes, “which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemocratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical freemarket 'reforms.'” One example Klein cites in her list is the U.S. intervention in Kosovo. But the human rights violation that she deplores was not the ethnic cleansing of Albanians, it was the American response. And what motivated the American attempt to stop the mass atrocity? Capitalism, of course: “The NATO attack on Belgrade in 1999 created the conditions for rapid privatizations in the former Yugoslavia—a goal that predated the war.” (Klein assures her readers that economics was not the “sole motivator” for the war, but her analysis makes no room for any such complication.)

Almost nothing can confound Klein's cookie cutter. You might have thought that, say, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in non-monetary things such as land, religion, security, and ideology. But it is not, as the doctrinaire Klein confidently explains. Israel made a peace deal with the Palestinians in 1993 because “Israeli corporations were tired of being held back by war,” and thought that if Israel made peace, it would “be perfectly positioned to be the Middle East's free-trade hub.” But then what changed? The answer is the Israeli economy: “the flipping of Israel's export economy from one based on traditional goods and high technology to one disproportionately dependent on selling expertise and devices related to counterterrorism.” Klein takes an unusual view of the causal relationship. Rather than terrorism instigating the rise of Israel's counterterrorism sector, Klein sees the relationship working in reverse: “the rapid expansion of the high-tech security economy created a powerful appetite inside Israel's wealthy and most powerful sectors for abandoning peace in favor of fighting a continual, and continuously expanding, War on Terror." So Israel decided to provoke bomb blasts in its buses and pizzerias largely—again, she dutifully concedes that it was not the sole factor—because building blast walls and bomb detectors became more profitable than living in peace.

 

THE HEART of Klein's book is her analysis of the Iraq war, which she regards as the state-of-the-art application, the definitive demonstration, of the shock doctrine. In Klein's telling, the war is merely a forcible expansion of economic globalization. “The architects of the invasion,” she instructs, “had unleashed ferocious violence because they could not crack open the closed economies of the Middle East by peaceful means.” Why, then, did Bush settle on Iraq, as opposed to some other closed Middle Eastern economy? Klein argues that other targets were indeed considered, but Bush chose Iraq owing to its “good central location for military bases,” the American military's familiarity with the terrain from the Gulf war, and the fact that “Saddam's use of chemical weapons on his own people made him easy to hate.”

Saddam's record of aggression of years of defying U.N. weapons inspectors does not make the list. “Saddam did not pose a threat to U.S. security,” she writes, “but he did pose a threat to U.S. energy companies, since he had recently signed contracts with a Russian oil giant and was in negotiations with France's Total.” Of course, Russia and France received contracts because they were working to undermine the sanctions regime and containment of Iraq. Why didn't Bush do the smart capitalist thing and simply make a deal with Saddam to drop the sanctions and cut American oil companies in on Iraq's oil reserves? Klein does not say.

It seems a little ridiculous to have to point out that Iraq is not exactly a new outpost of unfettered capitalism, with McDonald's and Exxon stations beckoning customers on every corner. The American master plan to transform Iraq into an “Arabic Singapore” has not worked out too well. But in full defiance of everything that we know about post-war Iraq, Klein proceeds to argue that what might superficially appear to be a total failure is, in fact, the successful culmination of the war's purposes. After the invasion, she explains, local democracy and inter-sectarian peace sprang out around the land. “Freedom,” she remarks, "was becoming a reality.” And from the perspective of the Bush administration, this was a problem. A truly democratic Iraq would never accept the laissez-faire economy that Washington wanted, and which was the entire purpose of the war. “So,” Klein deduces, “Washington abandoned its democratic promises and instead ordered increases in the shock level.”

Most critics of the war believe the notion of exporting democracy to a hostile Arab country was doomed in its conception. Some war supporters counter that the occupation could have succeeded, but bungling and incompetence caused it to fail. Klein is staking out a third, esoteric, highly original position. She says that the occupation could have succeeded, but the Bush administration did not want it to succeed. She is explicit about this:

Had the Bush administration kept its promise to hand over power quickly to an elected Iraqi government, there is every chance that the resistance would have remained small and containable, rather than becoming a countrywide rebellion. But keeping that promise would have meant sacrificing the economic agenda behind the war, something that was never going to happen.

Never? Ten pages later Klein concedes that, starting in December 2006, the Pentagon pulled a “dramatic about-face” and decided to re-open Iraq's state factories. Her cheerful insouciance in the face of such inconvenient facts points to an odd, slightly endearing quality of hers: she is conscientious enough to provide readers with facts that blow her thesis to smithereens, yet at the same time she is deluded enough not to notice the rubble of her thinking on the floor. So Klein makes a big deal about the comic but stillborn efforts by some Republican ideologues to transform Iraq into a flat-tax paradise, but she also notes that very little privatization actually took place in Iraq, and indeed that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had just three staffers devoted to privatizing Iraqi state industries. You would think this latter fact would undermine her belief that privatizing Iraq's economy was the central goal of the war. Alas, no. She thinks it just goes to show that “the CPA itself was too privatized to privatize Iraq.”

 

SO KLEIN attributes the failure to privatize Iraq to the CPA's incompetence, but she deems every other apparent failure to be a deliberate plan to foster chaos. To make this case, Klein runs through every one of the administration's post-war mistakes and explains why it was no mistake at all. Paul Bremer, the director of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance, decided to purge Baathists from the Iraqi government not because they were Baathists but because they were government employees. De-Baathification, Klein writes, “had little to do with anti-Saddamism and everything to do with free-market fervor.” She further insists that the widespread episodes of looting in early 2003 “cannot be dismissed as mere oversights,” but were part of the American plan to dismantle the Iraqi state.

With the pseudo-clarity of a conspiracy theorist, Klein dismisses out of hand the possibility of incompetence. There were memos warning the Army of looting, she ominously notes—scanting the possibility that bureaucratic lethargy, rather than conscious intent, prevented the memos' warnings from being acted upon at ground level. That widespread bungling and mismanagement also followed Hurricane Katrina strikes Klein as proof of intentionality. “The fact that exactly the same errors as those made in Iraq were instantly repeated in New Orleans,” she remarks, “should put to rest the claim that Iraq's occupation was merely a string of mishaps and mistakes marked by incompetence and lack of oversight.”

Like every conspiracy theory, Klein's account of the fate of the world finally lacks internal logic. She points to one instance of American soldiers dismembering Iraqi passenger planes, inflicting “$100 million worth of damage to Iraq's national airline—which was one of the first assets to be put on the auction block in an early and contentious partial privatization.” If the point of the war was to hand control of Iraq's state assets to American corporations, wouldn't American troops be protecting those assets instead of destroying them?

But her most explosive charge is that Bush and his cabal are not merely the puppets of war profiteers, but war profiteers themselves. “Key Bush officials have maintained their interests in the disaster capitalism complex,” thereby “allowing them to simultaneously profit from the disasters they help unleash.” Klein provides two examples of such conflicts of interest. The first is that Donald Rumsfeld maintained his stock in Gilead Sciences, which holds the patent for Tamiflu, even while serving as defense secretary. Get it? Rumsfeld would stand to profit from a flu pandemic. But surely you don't have to be an admirer of Rumsfeld to doubt that he would engineer an outbreak of a deadly virus in order to fatten his stock portfolio. (Indeed, one suspects that even if Rumsfeld tried to pull off such a dastardly scheme, he would probably wind up creating a cure for the flu by mistake and render Tamiflu worthless.)

The other piece of data that Klein cites to support her charge that Bush administration officials profit from the disasters that they cause is Vice President Cheney's holdings in Halliburton. “When he leaves office in 2009 and is able to cash in his Halliburton holdings,” she charges, “Cheney will have the opportunity to profit extravagantly from the stunning improvement in Halliburton's fortunes.” This is a spectacular accusation—that the driving force behind the Iraq war stands to gain millions of dollars from it. You might wonder why John Kerry did not make this an issue in 2004, or why liberal pundits have not crusaded against Cheney's blatant self-dealing. The answer, of course, is that it is completely untrue. Cheney has signed a legally binding agreement to donate to charity any increase in his Halliburton stock. (Honest— you can look this up on factcheck.org.) Lord knows Rumsfeld and Cheney have committed enough actual misdeeds not to need indicting with imaginary ones.

 

KLEIN'S STRENGTH as a writer is her interest in the ground level of things. Free-trade advocates rely heavily on abstract theory, lecturing us on comparative advantage and the relative virtues of Portuguese wine versus English wool; but Klein, no armchair radical, jets off to wretched places in the Third World and paints a picture of the reality of free trade in chilling detail. That picture ought to give pause to the most committed free-trader, even if she is hardly the only one to have noted these consequences. Yet when it comes to the right-wingers who constitute her book's main subject, Klein's reportorial spirit is nowhere to be found.

Klein's relentless materialism is not the only thing driving her to see conservatives merely as corporate puppets. She pays shockingly (but, given her premises, unsurprisingly) little attention to right-wing ideas. She recognizes that neoconservatism sits at the heart of the Iraq war project, but she does not seem to know what neoconservatism is; and she makes no effort to find out. Her ignorance of the American right is on bright display in one breathtaking sentence:

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,” a worldview that has harnessed the full force of the U.S. military machine in the service of a corporate agenda.

Where to begin? First, neoconservative ideology dates not from the 1990s but from the 1960s, and the label came into widespread use in the 1970s. Second, while neoconservatism is highly congenial to corporate interests, it is distinctly less so than other forms of conservatism. The original neocons, unlike traditional conservatives, did not reject the New Deal. They favor what they now call “national greatness” over small government. And their foreign policy often collides head-on with corporate interests: neoconservatives favor saber-rattling in places such as China or the Middle East, where American corporations frown on political risk, and favor open relations and increased trade. Moreover, the Heritage Foundation has always had an uneasy relationship with neoconservatism. (Russell Kirk delivered a famous speech at the Heritage Foundation in which he declared that “not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.”) And the Cato Institute is not neoconservative at all. It was virulently opposed to the Iraq war in particular, and it opposes interventionism in foreign policy in general.

Finally, there is the central role that Klein imputes to her villain Friedman, both in this one glorious passage and throughout her book. In her telling, he is the intellectual guru of the shock doctrine, whose minions have carried out his corporatist agenda from Santiago to Baghdad. Klein calls the neocon movement “Friedmanite to the core,” and identifies the Iraq war as a “careful and faithful application of unrestrained Chicago School ideology" over which Friedman presided. What she does not mention—not once, not anywhere, in her book—is that Friedman argued against the Iraq war from the beginning, calling it an act of “aggression.”

It ought to be morbidly embarrassing for a writer to discover that the central character of her narrative turns out to oppose what she identifies as the apotheosis of his own movement. And Klein's mistake exposes the deeper flaw of her thesis. Friedman opposed the war because he was a libertarian, and libertarian conservatism is not the same thing as neoconservatism. Nor are the interests of corporations always, or even usually, served by war.

What makes Klein's thesis so odd, and so awful, is that in fact there is an unlimited supply of raw material, an abundant basis in reality, for the sorts of arguments that she wants to make. The last two decades certainly have seen the global spread of absolutist free-market ideology. Many of the newest adherents of this creed are dictators who have learned that they can harness the riches of capitalism without permitting the freedoms once thought to flow automatically from it. In the United States, the power of labor unions has withered, and prosperity has increasingly come to be defined as gross domestic product or the rise of the stock market, with the actual living standards of the great mass of the population an afterthought. Corporations, which can relocate nearly anywhere around the world, have used their flexibility as a cudgel against workers, who do not enjoy the privileges of mobility. Domestic policy has aggressively sharpened income inequalities, and corporations have enjoyed unfettered influence to a degree not seen in a hundred years. And the president did start a war without paying the slightest bit of attention to the country that he would be left occupying or how its people would react.

All these things are true. And all these things are enormous outrages and significant problems. It's just that they are not the same outrage or the same problem. And Naomi Klein's relentless lumping together of all her ideological adversaries in the service of a monocausal theory of the world ultimately renders her analysis perfect nonsense.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.

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96 comments

Really great article Jon. It's always great when people argue with others on their own side for the cause of greater understanding. Too often these kinds of articles turn into a form of "I'm more centrist than you" denouncing, or take the form of "we must cast x out of the movement to preserve our credibility!", or come from people who don't really seem to be on the same side at all (ie Jamie Kirchick attacking anyone on the left). I haven't read Klein's book (and wasn't planning to), but I did think her original article on Iraq in Harper's (Baghdad Year Zero) was great. I basically buy your argument that she's a conspiracist in identifying particular motivations as singularly important, and ascribing a unity of purpose to a diverse number of people/projects, but parts of her thesis are still true on a smaller scale. Now let's get you and her together on Bloggingheads!

- Gabriel

July 18, 2008 at 3:06am

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Really well-done Jonathan. Great stuff. I managed to get through the first part of this load of tripe and was actually quite enjoying it until my wife told me it wasn't satire.

- Gennitydo

July 18, 2008 at 3:55am

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Good article by Jonathan Chiat on the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of Naomi Klein and her brand of lazy "the corporations did it" idiocy and their the allocation of blame for all of the world's ills, actual and imagined on capitalism. Unfortunately, Chait doesn't go far enough, or lacks enough of an understanding of economics, to point out that not only do Klein and her WTO-bashers get the facts willfully wrong, they are wrong in their diagnosis of ills. Chait, in fact, seems sympathetic to some of Klein's basic conclusions about the evils of globalization, and in this he is dead wrong. Globalization does not cause poverty, period. It cures it. The problem with Western idiots like Klein and her privilged, jetsetting minions is that they go to a place like Bangalore or Ben Hoa and lament the fact that people are working long hours in conditions that would not pass muster in the rich West. What goes unasked is what these people did before Nike came to town? The answer, pretty generally, is that they lived lives of Medieval rural poverty, with no access to health care and life expectancies of 30. Multinational access to third world labor markets is rasising living standards and wages as I write this. Globalization works, and is benefiting hundreds of millions of people in China and India that Naomi Klein never noticed when they were living and dying in rural poverty. The truth is that nobody is required to work for Nike or any other multinational. People do so because it is in their best interest, and the multinationals are dragging the third world out of poverty, with the Naomi Klein's of the world kicking and screaming every step of way. Gotta love the rich anti-globalisers like her: they would have the third world stay picturesque, impoverished, and ignorant - for their its good. There's imperialism for you!

- Ken Harvey

July 18, 2008 at 4:16am

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That David Brooks' column today paraphrases Friedman and the benefit (to the Republican Party) of the "shock doctrine" is just a coincidence.

-

July 18, 2008 at 7:33am

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Well written!

- moz

July 18, 2008 at 8:41am

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Absolutely wonderful article. I'm glad there are still some people that call themselves liberal out there denouncing this trash.

- Bursack

July 18, 2008 at 10:06am

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This has always been my basic beef with neo marxist thinkers; they end up ignoring and missing much in the chase for the big unified theory of everything. In many respects, they replicate the errors of the simplistic free market thinkers on the right. A more relentlessly empirical approach would go a long way to make better arguments for political liberalism.

- Northern Observer

July 18, 2008 at 10:17am

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Did News Corp recently purchase TNR? Nice article. I mean, seriously, the idea that corporations are bending us over a barrel is just crazy! Remember when TNR endorsed Lieberman?

- MMT

July 18, 2008 at 10:55am

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Chait, One of the reasons you are one of my favorite tnr columnists is that when you're on the hunt, you're like a dog pursuing the last bone on the continent. Much of what you say is true and generally, I stay far away from unified or monocausal theories of anything (though I do believe that one day, future scholars will be able to pin point the advent of FOXGOP news as the trigger point for the fall of journalism but that is another story) so I share your hesitancy to grant Klein's book your always hard earned imprimatur. Still, much of what Klein writes carries some truth - and to be honest, I did not know about her red diaper baby pedigree...interesting...and I read the latest bio on Walt Disney and still did not connect the dots...and she is an engaging, lively writer. I always enjoy her columns in The Nation, which address current political topics and rarely stray full form into her just presented theory of everything. Now that you have deconstructed - incinerated? - her book, I can now, in retrospect, see the germ of her theory in her columns. But she is smart, engaging, and not totally wrong about the perils and unintended consequences of globalization, and if you can take your claws off her comely throat for just an moment, you might realize that much of your work, especially in your recent book, resemble Klein's monocausal explanation, hers for globalization and all its attendant ills, and you when you laid at the feet of those supply side loons the fall of rational economic discussion and policy in the GOP and Washington. Food for thought...

- thejauntyboulevardier

July 18, 2008 at 10:59am

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Good boy, Jonathan! Your corporate sponsors will love this one! This might even secure that cushy job at the Washington Post, now that you have shown how well you can toe the corporate line. I read this hoping there would be some real analysis. Instead, all I get is the usual intentional misrepresentation of Klein's points. You might even say that Chait started out with a particular worldview, then weaved a story to fit that view, just as Chait accused Klein. Here is an example of Chait's dishonesty: On the very next page, she calls Friedman's plan "the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities." The reader is meant to recall Friedman's use of the word "opportunity," and forget his use of the word "tragedy." Reading Klein, you might almost conclude that Friedman devised the hurricane. This is a dishonest attack, and a weak one. A writer seeking to mislead readers about what Friedman said would leave out the word tragedy all together, not include it and hope the reader forgets it by the next page. In fact, Klein's argument that Friedman sees "the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities" does not imply at all that Friedman does not also see them as tragedies - it is wholly irrelevant to Klein's point. Chait's sleight of hand allows him to slime Klein for deceiving her readers...by deceiving his own readers. Chait continues, "Klein repeatedly implies that there is something immoral about using crises to advance the right-wing agenda without explaining why this is so." Has Chait read the book? It is very hard to miss this point. Klein does not imply, but states repeatedly that this is immoral because 1) the populace disagrees with Friedman's plans, whether he thinks they will work or not, and 2) Friedman and his ilk deliberately target crises so that they can accomplish things they know the public would never accept under normal circumstances. Regardless of whether it works, this is a subversion of Democracy and a moral disaster. This is such a basic point of the book that Chait has to be acting in bad faith to not note it here. Gabriel, I am sad to see that you take Chait's arguments about Klein at face value. I'm sorry, but Chait's mission here is to seriously mislead his readers and pad his resume for future corporate media opportunities. I recommend reading The Shock Doctrine - you will find that Chait's description of it is very unfair.

- rthorat

July 18, 2008 at 11:02am

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Great article- but please, please, please don't split it up into 10 separate pages with 2 paragraphs a piece. Thanks, from everyone that reads.

- Everyone that reads

July 18, 2008 at 11:05am

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Nice. I mean, seriously, the idea that corporations are bending us over a barrel is just crazy! Where does she get such silly thoughts. I agree that we are not anywhere near a world where we salute the corporate logo, but as far as Ms. Klein's idea needing to be more thought through, remind me again, who owns all the major networks, the cable networks, the Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, the...Oh, I'll stop, there I go again, getting all worked up by Ms Klein's crack pot theories. Anyway, keep up the good work. The Weekly Standard, ahem, I mean, The New Republic is a journal of great import and relevance.

- Matt

July 18, 2008 at 11:05am

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Great article! I find it difficult to argue with left wing conspiracy theorist sorts because they always have the luxury of shifting the argument from one topic to the next -- "see how it all fits together!" It’s as though a dozen half truths somehow adds up to the truth, when in fact it doesn't. Thanks for pulling her argument apart. I hope she takes time to read this.

- Andy

July 18, 2008 at 11:25am

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I am totally floored by how easily Chait distorts and misrepresents Klein. Nearly every paragraph contains some distortion or misrepresentation of her arguments. Another example is the discussion of Donald Rumsfeld owning stock in Gilead Sciences. Chait: "Get it? Rumsfeld would stand to profit from a flu pandemic. But surely you don't have to be an admirer of Rumsfeld to doubt that he would engineer an outbreak of a deadly virus in order to fatten his stock portfolio." Um, no. Let me turn on my brain and think about 1 second. The Secretary of Defense has the power to order stockpiles of Tamiflu in anticipation of a pandemic. Get it? Conflict of interest, no? This point is basic Klein did not feel the need to state it, but fellers like Chait see this as red meat distortion material. The point about Cheney and Halliburton is well taken, however Chait implies Klein has included this information in bad faith. I doubt it, since the irrevocable trust Cheney created is not well known. I have never heard this before and FactCheck.org seems to be the only source of this information. In all areas of the book, Chait loves to misrepresent Klein. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Klein sheds light on another factor influencing that conflict. She notes the other, more well-known issues, but does not discuss them because, guess what, THAT IS NOT THE SUBJECT OF HER BOOK. Chait seems unable to grasp this elementary fact. But since I know Chait is a smart guy and I have seen reviews like this hundreds times, I will assume that he knows that and is just looking to mislead his readers.

- rthorat

July 18, 2008 at 11:42am

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Wow. Klein's an absolute cunt. Imagine your grandfather's a douche-bag union leader. And your father's a chicken-shit draft dodger who went to Canada on "moral principles. " You yourself are some worthless cunt whose sole purpose for years was to follow the WTO and burn down McDonald's. I'd absolutely kill myself. A dungpile like this family has no moral compass - no heroes. Everything is flipped around. Does Klein knit her own shit or grow her own veggie burgers? If not, she should shut the hell up. If she wants to put her money where her mouth is, opt out of this capitalist society and move to Venezuela or Cuba. Skank ho. I'm sorry, people like this scum really drive me up the wall.

- jwl2672

July 18, 2008 at 12:04pm

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Hmmm.. try reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"... to understand the true impact of these policies on other countries... NOW IN AMERIKA. Balance.... WARNING: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, WITH CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President, 69 members of the Senate and 293 members of the House of Representatives.

- Anon

July 18, 2008 at 12:06pm

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Wow, after finishing this article I'm surprised and heartened by one thing. As lefty a leftist as Chait is, there are some levels on the spectrum he will not go to, unlike this Klein skank.

- jwl2672

July 18, 2008 at 12:10pm

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It's hard not to come away from NK's latest analysis without a profound sense of discouragement. It seems that she intends the speech as a pep talk - assuring us lefties that we hadn't lost the war of ideas - we were, rather, "crushed" by tanks. The tanks that shoot got us at Tiananmen and Santiago; the ones that "spin" thwarted our demands in Poland and S. Africa (I'd add that we got it both ways in Seoul). Furthermore, the post-9/11 fear-mongering has led to a "shock and disorientation" that puts us on some existential enemies list (since we're all for peace, presumably). We're not passionate enough, either. Those energized by greed and venality can get those in political control to do their bidding. She doesn't think we want social justice or clean air as much as Dick Cheney wants slam-dunk oil deals for his friends. I don't know. I have the feeling that there are many among us who get really juiced by the struggle: doing agit-prop, organizing protests, ferreting out corporate malfeasance, connecting the disenfranchised, etc. OK, my main point is that sometimes we're not blasted by water cannon or smacked down by Jeff Sachs' shock-therapy. Often we "lose" for the most banal reasons, such as bad analysis or "Oops, missed that!" NK goes on for some length about The World Social Forum and how the kick-off conference in Porto Alegre wasn't even covered in the U.S. media. Such hopeful and resistance-inspiring messages unable to connect with poorly-informed Americans, what a shame! But, hold on a minute. The WSF launch was just around the time of Seattle WTO protests and the publication of No Logo. Add to this the continuing press attention to anti-sweatshop uprisings across Asia and Central America and you'll see a target-rich environment for progressive activists. For some reason, however, she insists on a hyperbolic tableau: just prior to 9/11"our movement...was already facing extreme repression." I don't see it that way. Some of us were enthusiastically reporting the class-war klaxon calls we were hearing from export-processing zones across the developing world and the commercial media hungrily scarfed it up. No one tried to muzzle us, really. I could even travel back to Indonesia (a place where there actually was repression) even though they'd thrown me out a couple of years earlier. Globalization meant opportunities for lefties to connect across borders and autocrats generally put up with us pesky agitators. I know what many of you are thinking as you read this. "You were tolerated because you were a manageable irritant. You didn't actually change the way these Gaps and Nikes and Mattels operate, did you?" Fair enough. I have to say that I was utterly disconsolate when I saw a Hartford Courant story on how UCONN sweatshirts were being made about two years ago. This was "college-logo" apparel (where we would, in theory, see the best in wages and conditions) and that university has a vibrant chapter of the United Students Against Sweatshops. How could it be that workers were still earning only 18 cents for a $38 product? Had all our efforts been such a miserable failure? Yes, that's the inescapable conclusion. But it didn't have to be that way. What could have been... NK gave a pretty fair exposition of anti-sweat organizing in No Logo - both from the factory-level and amongst European and N. American activists. The ultimate conclusion which she arrived at, however, was that it was "roving and random" - shining a spotlight on this or that corner of the global economy but offering "no system of universal enforcement." (Unwittingly she was reinforcing characterizations of "gotcha" and "gadfly" - favorite dismissive snarls of corporate PR hacks.) I felt that this was a shallow and unfair reading of what had transpired in the eight years since I'd had an Indonesian Nike-worker's wage stub printed as the "Annotation" feature in Harper's. With a sole focus on Nike's shoe contract-suppliers in Indonesia, we had five years of meticulous research on file when Charlie Kernaghan dragged Kathie Lee Gifford onto the world stage and the sweatshop issue really took off in the U.S. In addition, NGOs from Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Italy, Holland, France, the UK and Germany had all done sport-shoe manufacturing studies in S-E Asia in the period 1990-95. In other words, very focused and reliable information about workers' legitimate protests (and illegitimate sackings) was already disseminated through multiple channels, years before NK went to Asia. This is not just "sour grapes" on my part. There is a serious cross-border organizing lesson to be learned here. Timelines for real change can be extraordinarily long and social forces (North and South) take a while to get in synch. NK speaks about "paths not taken" because of the forces of reaction and global capital. Let's just imagine that she took a different path in her years-long speaking tour after No Logo was published. She could have told those audiences (who were eager for change-agent tips) that one thing seemed to be working: intense scrutiny of a single brand, combined with "street heat" (the sainted Trim Bissell at the helm of the Campaign for Labor Rights) could dramatically affect sales. In fact, Nike's U.S. sales declined for over 5 years, while the default "conscious consumer" choice - New Balance - increased sales by over 400%. (Then, as now, NB made about 15% of its shoes in the U.S.) At the same time, she could have ridiculed the grotesque "corporate social responsibility" machinations of garment/shoe/toy/electronics companies and their NGO enablers. (I'm a fan of "militant abstentionism" - stay away from that "stakeholder" nonsense.)

- press4change

July 18, 2008 at 12:11pm

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I've been reading "The Shock Doctrine" of late, and felt there was something to it that rubbed me the wrong way. Mr. Chait identified it: the inconsistencies that come from adherence to a unified theory. Ms. Klein identifies some real phenomena and real problems with corporatism and "disaster capitalism," and then runs helter-skelter with them.

- jfelliott

July 18, 2008 at 12:38pm

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How magnanamous of you. We will take the wretched and poverty stricken, turn them into slave labor, make huge profits while destroying middle class jobs and claim how we, the corporations are making the world a better place.

- Andi

July 18, 2008 at 2:16pm

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What I'm amazed about Klein is the selective use of models. One of the most radical experiments in neoliberalism in the 1st world came in New Zealand in 1985, which suffered no major military coups, invasions or catatrosphic natural diasters in the 1980's that I know of. How about the Mike Harris in her home province of Ontario. No prison camps or tanks in street that I remember before he went after labour law and govt. pensions. The more complicated story is how neoliberalism managed to carry out its agenda in countries where it was democraticaly elected and endorsed by segement of the population.

- am

July 18, 2008 at 2:54pm

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Well that ought to pucker her mouth a bit. A little intellectual honesty goes a long way.

- Read

July 18, 2008 at 4:41pm

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jwl your misogyny makes your case oh so well. Grow up laddie, this isn't 6th grade nutrition break with all your pals hanging around idling the time away by making hateful comments about the popular girls. All you are showing is that you are an immature, emotionally stunted young man and if you represent the future of the conservative movement, then even I feel sorry for the GOP...

-

July 18, 2008 at 5:48pm

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you brought out all your old Swiftboat buddies with this one!

- rex clark

July 18, 2008 at 5:51pm

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to be honest, I am still steaming about jwl. In my life, I do not associate with low lifes who utter such delicacies as "c--t" and "ho" etc. That is one of the beauties of life: one can in the course of one's day, choose to stay away from such bottom feeders. The problem with electronic communities like this one is that our first amendment absolutism carries with it, the ever present possibility of some guy like jwl, who for some strange dark, deep psychological flaw, chooses to communicate in this fashion. I suppose we all can just shrug it off but like contact with skunks and feces, even in shrugging it off, some of the stench lingers on your person. Be advised laddie that if foer pulls this October confab together and we all go to DC to have some fun, you should know, for your own personal well being, that you should not pull this garbage in my society. I guarantee you young mister that one way or another, I will make use all my persuasive powers to disabuse you of ever doing this in my company again....

- thejauntyboulevardier

July 18, 2008 at 6:37pm

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Holy shit, misogyny in these columns much? WTF is wrong with some of you people?

- Gabriel

July 18, 2008 at 6:42pm

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I don't know what I did wrong so that my comment wasn't posted. But if my relatively mild criticism of Chait was worth censoring, while some other dude's use of offensive terms for Klein was a-OK, that is really not so great, TNR. My point, was that Chait's sneering tone detracts from necessary criticism of Klein. Also, Chait's resolute wrongheadedness on Iraq and on the left in the past 8 years should give him pause before he goes to call someone "far left" and act, O'Reilly-style, like he's won the debate through bullying and stigmatization.

- Elvis Elvisberg

July 18, 2008 at 7:06pm

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It would be lovely if we could discuss the book and the review without retorting to slurs like "skank ho" and "cunt". If that challenge is too big for you, jwl2672, you need to take your comments elsewhere, where that kind of tone is appropriate. The school yard maybe. Thank you.

- Eva.

July 18, 2008 at 7:43pm

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it's funny...in all 10 comments that were written by people who dont agree with Chait,he is accused of beeing a corporate spokesperson.Classic Klein's fallowers fanatism:"Either you are with us,or you are fascist-corporations-loving-bitch."

- lazy

July 18, 2008 at 8:35pm

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chait uses the propaganda term "anti-globalization". it is a neat trick to make his leftist adversaries appear like they want to go back to a world where people are isolated by borders. in fact, klein and the left aren't opposed to globalisation in the literal non-propagandist sense of the word. globalization only means international integration. WSO, a meeting across borders in a truly internationally integrating way, exemplifies that this movement isn't anti-globalization. the movement is anti this specific type of international integration that we are seeing now: international integration of capital alongside continued isolation of labor. chait is a corporate propagandist whether he knows it or not.

- jerkaboy

July 18, 2008 at 9:04pm

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I read the New Republic faithfully, waiting for an apologia for the historic Left's love affair with Marxism as it's been practiced and not as it theoretically might have been in an "ideal" world. I just finished reading Susan Sontag's son's story of her mother's desparate last year of life. She longed for life. She couldn't accept the inevitably of death. She had suffered from life-long depression and absence of joie de vivre. It wasn't the loss of her unhappiness that she feared. It was the inevitable fate of all humans that she feared--death. She feared what lay on the other side. In her case--nothing. When I read drivel like Klein's, I can't help but witness the unhappy detour that Eastern Europe's Jews took in the late 19th century. They abandoned four thousand years of tradition in favor of secular humanism without a God. There hasn't been a happy, joyful secular humanist Jew since. When will the apologies come for the hundreds of millions of humans who have suffered under Marxist ideology ever come? Look at China. The only way you could suppress thousands of years of being merchants is with a Communist gun barrel. Probably the more money Ms. Klein makes off her books, the more Jewish guilt she feels at her unworthiness to receive it. Another NY Marxist who will die rich.

- j.m. corley

July 18, 2008 at 9:38pm

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Does the word "skank" add to the value of your post? Or is it suppose to give us a clue as to the level of education you have attained?

- Fracuss

July 18, 2008 at 11:41pm

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Your Mother should wash out your mouth with soap. Perhaps, at my request, TNR will do the job. Bye, bye

- Fracuss

July 18, 2008 at 11:43pm

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There's some truth in Klein's book, that' Chait and other liberals (especially ones working at TNR, who really have an elitist sheen - that just an impression, but snarky, elitist, too clever for their own good would describe a lot of TNR staffers)ignore at their peril. Her attempts to unify the phenomenon of coprorate globalization into a grand theory of malfeasance is of course doomed. Global capitalism is too complex, too varied, too above all global to be reduced to an all encompassing theory. Still. There are serious problems. Just yesterday there was a story in the NYtimes about how private contracting in Iraq in electricity had resulted in increased Iraqi and GI deaths and injuries. These stories about Blackwater, Halliburton, are endless. Workers out there are suffering, and not because of Klein's book. Labor unions are shut down in third world countries, and not because of Klein's book. Were that Chait's outrage focused on something that was actually destroying people's lives, rather than an over-reaching but pointed rant from Klein.

- Dave

July 18, 2008 at 11:50pm

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No one should comment on this article unless they have read the book. You have no point of comparison. You are taking one person's view point as the truth. The same as one might who has only read the book uncritically. I read the book, and if you take in the whole view, instead of the nit picking required of a reviewer, you will see that the actions of the U.S. government via the Chicago School, the IMF, World Bank etc. were disgusting. What they inflicted on people makes the Bush torture machine look like pikers. J.C. has scored some points, but they do not make this book worthless. The well documented facts are the essence of this book, even if the hypothesis is uneven. Naomi Klein is a talented writer, and has written an information packed book. Read it and draw your own conclusions. Don't let someone else do your thinking. If that is what you want, listen to Hannity and Limbaugh.

- Fracuss

July 18, 2008 at 11:56pm

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jwl2672: " I'd absolutely kill myself." Please do. Or at least cut your fingers off so you can no longer type.

- Man Overboard

July 19, 2008 at 2:44am

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Amazing article. As a libertarian, it's obvious where my sympathies are, nevertheless you articulate many concerns I had after reading articles on Shock Doctrine. Quote: "notion that crises create fertile terrain for political change, far from being a ghoulish doctrine unique to free-market radicals, is a banal and ideologically universal fact." This seemed so obvious to me, immediately thinking of the revolutions that overthrew the feudal order in Europe, e.g. French revolution and British parliamentary conflicts with the King. The entire book seems like hard left material that shows she has learnt nothing from Friedman, Hayek etc. It just dismisses us all as evil men with nefarious plans. She shows no nuance in her arguments. I want to learn from the left. Someone mentioned Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which does not resemble Kleins book in tone at all. That book taught me something, I doubt hers will. If the review of this book convinced me of anything, it's that reading Shock Doctrine will be a true waste of my time.

- James Gribble

July 19, 2008 at 2:55am

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Ultimately the proof is in the pudding: look at the mess the USA is in, not just going but gone, (wait and see). Now we can safely assume from examples like this critique, it's morally myopic and intellectually bankrupt intelligentsia played their tiny part, (after all, who but the PC correct even read anymore). Just read the responses of the people who agree with you...

- Kim O'Brien

July 19, 2008 at 4:04am

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I have no idea why Naomi Klein is taken seriously. I know for a fact that she was going to wrote a book about who profited from the Iraq war, but after I sent her publisher my Playboy article, "Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," she abandoned the project and wrote "The Shock Doctrine," a rant with no basis in fact. The fact is that Big Oil opposed the Iraq war, but the arms merchants did not. It is chilling to learn that top Lockheed executives are actually in on the decision making process at the Pentagon.

- Richard Cummings

July 19, 2008 at 9:16am

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July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Cuban President Raul Castro will redistribute government land that is not in use to private farmers to stimulate the country's agricultural industry. Castro will hand over a ``considerable percentage'' of idle land to farmers to increase food production and reduce imports, according to a decree posted on the Web site of Cuba's official newspaper Granma today. "Socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income," he said in a speech on national television. I suppose this could be an example of dictators using the market to garner riches, but does Klein really believe that the Castro brothers are part of the great friedman plan?

- robert verdi

July 19, 2008 at 10:41am

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I'm not your biggest fan John. But I congratulate you on the dissection of the lamentable work of NK. You use facts and level-headedness to counter NK's delusional cherry-picking and fraud. I'm a conservative. I did not support the Iraq invasion but once it happened I wholeheartedly supported the troops, the mission, the Iraqi people and also the surge. Your rejection of the conspiracy clowns is much more valuable coming from a liberal because even though some will brand you a corporate shill or use words like "distorts and misrepresents" without any backup, there are plenty of liberals who will value truthfullness over ideology. I am going to make a point of catching more of your work, thanks.

- harkin

July 19, 2008 at 10:47am

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Naomi Klein is spot on. You capitalist right wingers are afraid of her, as well you should be. The world's economy is in a mess; the middle class is vanishing into poverty. Globalization is filling the pockets of mega-corporations at the expense of the poor. But you don't care, do you? I suppose you'll all vote for John McCain.

- Mariam

July 19, 2008 at 10:55am

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He's correct that the "classic" Marxist boils everything away to money and power, ignoring culture, history, religion, even altruism. If your a political writer, its a good place go, because the material is everywhere, so long as people want a wealthy society we seemingly need a capitalist economy. Government even into the 21st century doesn't know how to create wealth, socialist still means poor. On the other hand, I don't find Klein to be distinctive. The Bush administration has its materialist side; ignoring culture and history when invading Iraq, ignoring the financial health of the government when pouring money into energy, farm, and steel sectors, ignoring the social and cultural cohesiveness of America when opening the borders. These is a very materialistic, even "Marxist" side, to our current government.

- pashley

July 19, 2008 at 11:18am

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So rthorat, "the irrevocable trust that Cheney created is not well known"..., but it can be found at Fact Check.com.Naughty facts, hiding away like that. And in a place so deceptively titled.

- gavin

July 19, 2008 at 11:20am

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Thanks for the review. I have not read the book but have heard Klein talk and have heard interviews. From what I have heard, I find it very sad how many people love to hear crazy conspiracy theories, especially if large corporations and/or Bush and company are involved. Klein is nothing else but a hate promoter - and making lots of money from it I am sure.

- HW

July 19, 2008 at 12:14pm

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I'm impressed; this was a very fair article. It's nice to know that a commentator will not allow himself to be blind to the inconsistencies and fallacies in a writer's argument just because she is on the same side of the ideological aisle as he is.

- Rowan

July 19, 2008 at 12:31pm

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I have not read Disaster Capitalism yet, but I read her Rolling Stone article on how US corporations are helping Communist China maintain as much of its totalitarian rule as it can, while at the same time modernizing economically by doing what the US SHOULD be doing: running their country in THEIR OWN economic interests. This is what we did from 1901 to 1980, ran our country in our peoples's best interest. Until the insane treasonous Milton Friedman BS economic theory took over. Reagan, who didn't grasp history or economics, followed what National Review types told him to do. Bush's father followed it, too, and of course filthy Bush himself no more grasps economics than he does nuclear physics. He is not going to rock the putrid free trade low taxes boat. So the top 20% of the population in the US have benefitted over the last 27 years, while most of the rest of us have lost, some have lost in a BIG way. And, in terms of the national debt and the pride and prestige that went with having once been the most dynamic positive nation on Earth, WE HAVE ALL LOST, EVEN THOSE WHO HAVE BECOME RICH. For, due to Bush and his vicious ilk, the US is now a laughing stock. We were trillions of dollars ahead, and now we are $9.6 trillion in debt, AND THAT'S NOT COUNTING THE TRADE DEFICITS. AND, AT THE SAME TIME WE WENT INTO DEBT, WE purposefully DESTROYED THE MANUFACTURING CAPABILITY THAT WOULD ENABLE US TO PAY FOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE WE NEED. BUSH AND HIS GANG, AND THE RIGHT WING IN GENERAL, OPENLY HAVE STATED THAT THYE WANT THE MANUFACTURING BASE TO DISAPPEAR, THEY WANT THE UNIONS AND THE MINIMUM WAGE TO DISAPPEAR, THEY WANT TO OUTSOURCE EVERY JOB THEY CAN TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES, INCLUDING THE "BRAINPOWER JOBS" THEY ONCE CLAIMED THE US COULD KEEP. tHE RIGHT HAS SAID THEY WANT TO BRING IN MORE ILLEGALS TO DRIVE US WAGES DOWN LOWER, THET WANT MORE PEOPLE UNINSURED, THEY WANT OIL COMPANY PROFITS PROTECTED, AND, ABOVE ALL, THEY WANT THE RICH AND SUPERRICH TO PAY LESS THAN 5% TAXES. THE LEAST WORTHY, THE INHERITORS OF GREAT WEALTH WHO HAVE NEVER WORKED, THEY WANT TO PAY O% TAX. This is their program. No more than 10% of the American people ever knowingly voted for this radical policy, yet the Bush gang has pushed it to the point where they have gotten more than 40% of their goal already. But the Bush economic collapse has put a little monkey wrench in their anti-American plot. Simply put, despite Milton Friedman's hateful fantasies, YOU CAN'T LIVE OFF A NATIONAL CREDIT CARD FOREVER. NAOMI KLEIN IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!

- R. Ashton

July 19, 2008 at 12:45pm

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So you can talk nasty. Any other contributions you can make to society?

- Fracuss

July 19, 2008 at 1:03pm

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jwl2672 needs to have his mouth washed out with soap. If the best he can contribute to a conversation is vile and abusive language, we don't need him. He insults ever woman who participates in this discussion. I would say he is a pig, but that might be considered too high a complement.

- Fracuss

July 19, 2008 at 1:06pm

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RE Jonathan Chait’s piece on Naomi Klein: I enjoyed the article which is well written. Whilst going through it, I extracted a few pieces that elicited a response. “Klein observes that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Friedman described the ruin of the New Orleans school system thusly: "This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to radically reform the education system." On the very next page, she calls Friedman's plan "the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities." The reader is meant to recall Friedman's use of the word "opportunity," and forget his use of the word "tragedy." Reading Klein, you might almost conclude that Friedman devised the hurricane. Klein repeatedly implies that there is something immoral about using crises to advance the right-wing agenda without explaining why this is so. After all, Friedman wanted to overhaul the New Orleans public education system because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that vouchers would work better. If you thought your house was horribly designed, and a tornado flattened it, would you rebuild it exactly as before? “ Response: I am not sure I buy the premise that the collapse of the buildings and population in New Orleans was the ‘ruin of the New Orleans school system’. Certainly, it was the ruin of infrastructure. But the system? To me this is the equivalent of arguing that, if the 911 attack had flattened the Pentagon, that the entire US military system should be reworked, not simply another building. ……. “ The liberal economist Victor R. Fuchs once wrote that "national health insurance will probably come to the United States in the wake of a major change in the political climate, the kind of change that often accompanies a war, a depression, or large-scale civil unrest." Fuchs did not mean that the public would never accept universal health insurance unless they had been brutalized into doing so. Nor was his observation evidence that he longed for disaster to befall the United States. Most American liberals today would admit that the sorry state of the American economy, foreign policy, and political life has created a golden opportunity for progressive reform. There is nothing odious about this. Yet Klein takes analogous observations from conservatives as proof that the right "prays for crisis the way drought-stricken farmers pray for rain." “ Response: this is a good point, though I am not convinced that Klein would say something quite that simplistic. The point about this, though, is that a mindset that deliberately engenders and/or exploits crises in order to effect certain changes that it has wanted all along is something to be watched carefully because the solutions – for example attacking Iraq in response to a supposed Al Qaida attack – have very little bearing on addressing the underlying causes of, and therefore solutions to, the crisis. ‘Lust for power not being same as lust for profit.’ The two are very close though in that both require harvesting resources from many to few (or even one). Both are about control. Re: ‘Israel’s growth in anti-terrorism related industry being the cause of the conflict versus and outgrowth.’ Fair point. However, it can still be reasonably argued that the convergence of profit motive with situation fosters exploitation – and therefore continuation – of the conflict versus resolution. Put another way: it is more profitable for certain vested interests that the conflict remain and whilst the conflict continues those same vested interests tend to enjoy a certain prominence and therefore help to maintain the status quo, i.e. ongoing conflict and their predominance. Some might call this a conspiracy theory, but really it is just how the world works and always has. Of course, you can create confluence of interest around things other than ethnic conflict as in the above example, but to deny that such confluences do not exist in human affairs is just another form of ‘tinfoilhatitis’. ………………………….. “but she also notes that very little privatization actually took place in Iraq, and indeed that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had just three staffers devoted to privatizing Iraqi state industries. You would think this latter fact would undermine her belief that privatizing Iraq's economy was the central goal of the war. Alas, no. She thinks it just goes to show that "the CPA itself was too privatized to privatize Iraq." Response: the point here is that privatization is not necessarily the goal except in the context of wresting entrenched power from governments. If one has control of government and all national assets, there is no need for privatization, indeed it becomes anathema. The issue is control. And of course by ‘one’ here I mean more a class or elite structure rather than one person, committee or ideology. …… “If the point of the war was to hand control of Iraq's state assets to American corporations, wouldn't American troops be protecting those assets instead of destroying them?” Response: No, because American corporations will get contracts to supply new planes, which is far more profitable. I am not saying this is the case, but your argument against Klein here, as too often the case in the article, is far too shallow, being essentially only rhetorical emotives. …………………… “The answer, of course, is that it is completely untrue. Cheney has signed a legally binding agreement to donate to charity any increase in his Halliburton stock. (Honest-- you can look this up on factcheck.org.)” Great point. There is still a small conflict of interest in that such donations will give significant tax savings on future gains elsewhere after he leaves office, including lucrative speaking engagements on behalf of Halliburton! But I didn’t know that and am glad to learn it. …………….. General point: Globalisation is not necessarily synonymous with corporatist dominance. You can have a highly globalised international economy without one single multinational corporation even though that is not the common usage of the term globalization nowadays. Furthermore, although ‘globalization’ is a factor in, for example, China’s recent resurgence, much of the credit has to go to internal political reforms which promoted a return to joining the world trading systems after a 200 year hiatus from previously being the world leader in the same – and for many, many centuries to boot. I don’t think this was due to corporate laissez faire elites so much as the desire of the Chinese in general to come back as a vibrant nation after a long funk (which has happened several times before in their 2+ millennia long history). ………. “All these things are true. And all these things are enormous outrages and significant problems. It's just that they are not the same outrage or the same problem. And Naomi Klein's relentless lumping together of all her ideological adversaries in the service of a monocausal theory of the world ultimately renders her analysis perfect nonsense.” Response: that is a good point about monocausal fallacies. Actually, this goes back to the beginnings of Klein and your article in terms of materialism. Materialism itself is somewhat a monocausal fallacy in the sense that the underlying assumption - that this immediate physical world is all there is, to oversimplify – puts everything under one tent, and from there the next natural progression is to figure out totalitarian solutions, be they so-called ‘democracy’ or whatever. But since everything is of the same (materialist) nature, one solution can be found to fit all. However, there is a tendency nowadays to dismiss all criticisms of the status quo as ‘conspiracy theories’. The fact is that throughout human history there have been different classes (both horizontal and vertical). This is true in the individual family (parents and children) and huge empires. It is always true. Social groups will always have some who lead and some who assist and some who are led. It is totally unavoidable, neither good nor bad. But further, around the ruling classes there are always streams of influence that develop over time and usually become corrupt in that their goal is simply to manipulate the power that any societal collective inevitably produces. And once the goal of controlling that control becomes its own end and the common good of society is ignored in that endeavour, then you have problems. Whether they are ‘conspiracies’ or not, they manifest as mindsets, tendencies, schools of thought, cultural trends, overt – and yes, covert – organisations. Any society ignores this at their peril.

- AshleyH

July 19, 2008 at 1:18pm

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Jonathan Chait slams Klein's thesis that Bush and his gang intentionally did much of what they did in Iraq for economic purposes. I don't know if Naomi Klein said it or not, but I say that there is A LOT OF EVIDENCE that Bush and his gang intended for Republican connected contractors and for Cheney's old company, Halliburton, to walk away with billions of dollars for doing very little, and if chaos ensued it would be easier for them to get away with it. If Chait admitted some KNOWN FACTS which cannot be ascribed to anything but nefarious intent on the part of Bush and his gang, then I would say he is doing an honest job of evaluating the Bush Iraq War. Chait snipes that Klein, "is conscientious enough to provide readers with facts that blow her thesis to smithereens." No, she is honest enough to mention facts that SOME READERS, LIKE CHAIT, think disprove her thesis. The real World does not necessarily perfectly fit into ANYONE'S theory, especially in a wartorn country. So Klein was honest. Chait, are YOU honest enough to discuss the $8 billion in cash that Bush ordered taken out of the Federal Reserve cash depository in New Jersey in 2003? Bush had it placed in military airplanes and taken to Iraq, where it disappeared without a trace. Not $8 million, EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS in US cash! Do you suppose Bush's people took any of it? Do you suppose corrupt Iraqis working with the US took any of it? Do you suppose the INSURGENTS took any of it? To finance their attacks on US soldiers. What HONEST purpose could Bush have had? If Bush had not lied us into a war, do you suppose he could have gotten away with this crime? The chaos of an occupation, one in which the press is controlled, would be the OPTIMUM environment for spreading $8 billion in US currency around, with the condition that American and Iraqi thieves who got a piece of it HAD TO KEEP THEIR MOUTHS SHUT ABOUT IT. Which would be in their best interests anyway. Chait says that, "very little privatization actually took place in Iraq, and ... the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had just three staffers devoted to privatizing Iraqi state industries. You would think this latter fact would undermine her belief that privatizing Iraq's economy was the central goal of the war." Now, I don't think that privatizing the Iraqi ecomy was the main goal. BUT I DO THINK THAT MAKING MONEY OFF OF THE ATTEMPT WAS A MAIN GOAL. What did Bush and his gang care if the attempt was successful? Bush-connected contractors made billions off of the ATTEMPT. I doubt if Bush and Cheney really care about worshipping in the Milton Friedman cult, but if they and their friends COULD MAKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND GET HUGE POLITICAL BENEFIT, I.E. WIN THE 2004 ELECTION, BY CRIMINALLY CHANNELING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO SELECT CORPORATIONS OPERATING IN IRAQ, AND BY KEEPING IRAQ IN A CRISIS ATMOSPHERE BY LETTING IT GET BAD, SO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE COULD RALLY AROUND THE PRESIDENT IN WARTIME, WHY WOULD THEY NOT DO THAT? Chait mentions looting, claiming it was due to mere incompetence. Then WHY DID BUSH HAVE AMERICAN TROOPS GUARD ONLY THE OIL MINISTRY, AND NOT THE MINISTRIES WHERE THE RECORDS OF WMD DEVELOPMENT WERE KEPT? Every ministry but the oil ministry was looted and/or burned? Chait thinks that was a coincidence? Why did Rumsfeld MAKE 2 SPEECHES TELLING IRAQIS IT WAS OK WITH HIM IF THEY LOOTED, WE WOULD NOT COME DOWN HARD ON YOU AND SHOOT YOU IF YOU LOOT, "FREE PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES" AND LOOT, OR THEY NEED TO "BLOW OFF STEAM" AND LOOT. Making speeches ENCOURAGING LOOTING signifies INTENT to promote looting. Bush obviously went along with this pro-looting agenda, because he could have fired Rummy, and ordered looters shot on sight, and he did neither. BUSH AND RUMMY EVEN IGNORED WARNINGS OF LOCALS THAT IRAQIS WERE LOOTING IRAQI ARMY WEAPONS DEPOTS. American troops who volunteered to guard these depots WERE ORDERED NOT TO. Hundreds of our troops were later killed by improvised explosives formulated from these looted weapons. HOW IS BUSH NOT LIABLE FOR THE INTENTIONAL KILLING OF OUR TROOPS? With a word Bush could have guarded every one of these places that we knew about, and he could have had a complete 24 hour curfew for all males for 30 days, and let the females leave to pick up food rations, etcetera. Bush intentionally let the situation disintegrate, because he knew a quick "successful" war like his fathers's was soon forgotten by the American public, and you can't run as a A WAR PRESIDENT IF THE WAR IS OVER FAST.

- R. Ashton

July 19, 2008 at 1:53pm

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Ronald Reagan did indeed start many of the Problems plaguing the USA now. He signed the 1986 Amnesty engineered by the socialist, drunk and killer Ed Kennedy. Thereby, increasing the welfare and crime rate more than any single bill ever passed, (with the possible exception of probation on crime) while encouraged millions of uneducated peons & criminals to pour across our borders until now we have suffered the largest invasion in the history of the world. The 20 to 40 millions of uneducated illegal aliens currently residing in the USA is turning the USA into the largest Socialist Nation in the world. Each person with less than a high school education, Legal or Illegal is an net drain of 20k per year on the backs of American tax payers. The businesses employing the Illegal Aliens are in effect enjoying nearly slave labor while pocketing the profits and passing on the actual cost to American tax payers of not only his employees but all of their family members residing with them. The cost for their Medical, Schooling and Welfare makes them the most expensive manual labor in the world. Now we have both Presidential candidates pandering for the Latino vote and promising Amnesty which will compound the problems allowing them to access even more social benefits! Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has done the systematic accounting on all this. A typical household headed by a low-skilled illegal alien is a net drain of about $20k/year for the rest of us, year after year. (Low-skilled Americans are a similar burden, but they're part of the national family, not gate crashers from other societies.) The globalist, multiculturalism, open border advocates, liberals & businesses profiting from Illegal Aliens argument that they the Illegal Aliens pay tons of taxes, sure they all pay real estate taxes (in rent) and sales taxes (most states). Those working on the books approximately 35 % using stolen Social Security numbers or other fraudulent documents pay FICA and, perhaps, income taxes. But they're mostly ill-educated and low-skilled and pay very low taxes connected to their working. In fact, most claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, i.e. negative income tax! Of course, the remaining 65% of the Illegal Aliens working off the books typically work for cash and pay nothing except real estate taxes (in rent) and sales taxes (most states). The Latinos that make up the largest group of the Illegal Aliens population has the largest school drop out rate of any ethnic group in the USA, second highest illegitimate birth rate, second highest crime rate, highest birth rate and recent studies confirm they start dropping out of school, using drugs, having illegitimate kids, joining gangs at an earlier age then any ethnic group in the USA. This behavior continues even after citizenship and down through each generation. This culture characteristic explains why Mexico and Latin American, while having more natural resources and moderate climate than most First World Nations are still mired in an Cesspool of Crime, Corruption, Poverty and Misery! Amnestying them & with chain immigration for their relatives and their relatives in an never ending chain will add 100,s of millions, a vast underclass of uneducated citizens that will make it impossible to continue the social network for American tax payers. When that occurs you will see riots, fires and pillage from coast to coast that will make the recent rioting in French by Muslim immigrants look like an cook out! A recent study by the International Monetary fund confirms that remittance is not only is bad for the remittance country but for the country receiving the money. It allows the home country (normally third world nations) to keep from addressing the problems and improving their citizens standard of living and continue the same policies and keeping in power the corrupt government without facing an revolution and demands from citizens for improvements. So, our open borders and amnesty for the invading horde of illegal aliens is not only bad policy for this Nation but perpetrates the poverty and misery in the home countries. Mexico for many years has encouraging their Criminals and Uneducated peons to pour across our borders and send money home while retaining loyally to the home country (illegal aliens are treated as heroes in their home countries) Mexico's primary economic policy is to send their poverty to the USA for American tax payers to support while having one of the most punitive and enforced immigration policies in the world! We are now seeing that the Illegal Aliens can not only impact this Nation but the global economy as well. Many of the Sub-Prime loans & defaults were to Illegal Aliens that started the unraveling of the Global Economy! Just like our Declining standard of living, Bankrupt Hospitals, Failing Schools, Welfare costs, Identity fraud, Welfare fraud, Voter fraud, Gangs, Crime, Crowded prisons, Destroyed communities, Exploding population, Congested roads, Pollution, Insurance costs, Balance of payments, (Imported oil etc. to support the illegal alien population) Trashed Constitution and the Rule of Law, they have spread their negative impact across the world. It looks like with American heading into a very bad recession or more likely an depression, The 100,s of billions the Illegal Aliens are costing American tax payers for free medical, schooling, welfare etc. needs to be spend on American citizens, not invading criminals from third world counties, plus the 40 to 50 billions remittance by Illegal aliens needs to stay in the country to simulate this economy and force Mexico to address their problems! Last but not least, all Nations immigration policies are is by design & intent suppose to enhance the Nation and its Citizens that immigrated legally, obeyed the laws, paid the taxes, fought the wars and built the nation! Clearly for the reasons numerated above Amnesty for the invading horde of uneducated peons and criminals does not meet this criteria. They certainly must not be used to further the political careens and lust for power of Corrupt/Pandering Politicians like Obama & McCain!

- black saint

July 19, 2008 at 3:18pm

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I agree with Everyone who reads: why is the article broken up into 10 parts, two paragraphs apiece? I do not understand. Chait was, as usual, devastating on his target. I would love for Klein to respond; in fact I will contact her website and let her know about the review.

- Jack Davis

July 19, 2008 at 3:35pm

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There needs to be some careful reading of the time-lines suggested by Klein regarding Thatcher's supposed use of the Falklands crisis, and the subsequent 1983 election, as a "crisis" to impose her agenda. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, from the mid-1970s onwards could see that Thatcher "the Milk Snatcher" was ready to go full-blast against the unions and public spending, and she and Norman Tebbitt went at them heavy in their first term beginning in 1979. That the most effective parts came followig her re-relection on a war platform says nothing at all about the deep roots of her mandate, nor about the real troubles -- which Klein entirely ignores -- into which the UK was plunged in the 1970s, not the least because of irresponsible "shock doctrines" emanting from miners' union HQ and elsewhere. Klein wields a one size fits all theory that pretty much flops after Chile.

- Dave W.

July 19, 2008 at 3:37pm

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Jonathan Chait does an excellent job of describing the ignorance and irrationality of the anti-global left. I would add that the anti-globalists are totally lacking in humanity. Under Chairman Mao millions of people died of starvation. Yet these radicals oppose the changes in China that have led to spectacular improvements in the standard of living. That China, a Communist dictatorship, has adopted market oriented economic policies is inexplicable to the the Naomi Kleins of the world. I guess the leaders read too much Milton Friedman. Or Vietnam. In recent years the Communist leaders have liberalized the economy, with spectacularly good results. Is that a bad thing? Or Korea. North Korea is one big concentration camp where despite extensive food aid millions starved in the 1990s. South Korea is a prosperous democracy. Guess which Korea has a capitalist economic system. Or Brazil. Its left-leaning government is practicing poliicies that look a lot like capitalism. Brazil is becoming a major economic player. By contrast there is no example of a country that takes socialism seriously that is doing well economically.

-

July 19, 2008 at 3:56pm

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Jonathan Chait does an excellent job of describing the ignorance and irrationality of the anti-global left. I would add that the anti-globalists are totally lacking in humanity. Under Chairman Mao millions of people died of starvation. Yet these radicals oppose the changes in China that have led to spectacular improvements in the standard of living. That China, a Communist dictatorship, has adopted market oriented economic policies is inexplicable to the the Naomi Kleins of the world. I guess the leaders read too much Milton Friedman. Or Vietnam. In recent years the Communist leaders have liberalized the economy, with spectacularly good results. Is that a bad thing? Or Korea. North Korea is one big concentration camp where despite extensive food aid millions starved in the 1990s. South Korea is a prosperous democracy. Guess which Korea has a capitalist economic system. Or Brazil. Its left-leaning government is practicing poliicies that look a lot like capitalism. Brazil is becoming a major economic player. By contrast there is no example of a country that takes socialism seriously that is doing well economically.

- bulbman1066

July 19, 2008 at 3:57pm

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Thank you so much for doing your part in exposing another example of the liberals' evil plan to spread justice, peace and civil liberty. Naomi Klein is indeed the very personification of evil ("immoral" someone commented) and must be stopped before her evil lies cause the destruction of humanity (or at least cause us to have to pay more taxes). Your sarcastic rant and bash-job of an article artfully circumnavigates the inconvenient history of torture, murder and shameless pillaging that are part and parcel of the free market experiment as documented in the book. Kudos to you on your clearly unbiased and objective perspective on Ms. Klein's crazy theories. She has really duped many well-known and respected reviewers and intellectuals, but I'm glad that you are smarter than them and can expose the truth. Judging from some of the other comments, which resort to rabid personal attacks and obscene name-calling (yes, someone used the C-word. Classy.), the rabble is pleased with you. Keep fighting the good fight in support of policies that have horribly polluted the environment, widened the gap between the rich and poor, enraged religious fundamentalists throughout the world, created more slavery than at any other time in human history, and shed copious amounts of innocent blood.

- Shanthony

July 19, 2008 at 6:21pm

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Ken Harvey, I couldn't agree with you more, sir. I have lived in China for 3 years now and the simple truth is, capitalism had changed that country, irreversible for the better and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

- Tyler Jensen

July 19, 2008 at 6:27pm

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Its nice to see TNR's status quo apologetics so out of the closet. Please give us more like this. No wonder you hated the Ron Paul people so much.

- Seth

July 19, 2008 at 7:02pm

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Why don't you join humanity? It's so much more pleasant than that venom-spewing, hate-filled world you have obviously created for yourself.

- Shanthony67

July 19, 2008 at 7:32pm

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While it is touching to see a young lady so tenaciously fulfilling her family traditions, methinks entirely too much attention and ink is being wasted on a very pedestrian conspiracy theorist and true believer.

- Cincinnati Rick

July 19, 2008 at 11:01pm

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Good to see that this is one Leftist critique that doesn't blame it all on the Jews. Oh wait, Friedman...Damn we're good.

- ian

July 20, 2008 at 2:30am

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I really did wonder where the anti-globalization types came from and now I am starting to understand. This article was completely enlightening on that subject. I can't believe that some people do not understand that what drives globalization is the everlasting search for profit. Call it greed; call it what you will. It's no more complicated than that. The two emotions that drive markets are greed and fear. The workers who take sweat shop jobs are driven by greed for a better standard of living. Even at 18 cents, they are not taking a pay cut to make sweatshirts and they won't be happy next year if they don't get a raise. So, it's easy to hate the oppressors that sell an 18 cent sweatshirt for $30-50 in a college bookstore. But how easy is it to recognize and fear the chattering gadabout who extracts millions in book revenues from a completely bogus theory. I guess there's still a sucker born every day; most of the respondents to this article just don't realize it's them.

- MA

July 20, 2008 at 6:24am

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Many of you are missing Klein's point. Whether tanks show up on the street is not the central thesis. The main point is how neoliberalism has been imposed stealthily, without the true consent of the people. Take the examples of Reagan and Sarkozy. Reagan was not endorsed by PATCO (the air traffic controllers' union) based on his neoliberal views. Indeed the air traffic controllers would face the brunt of this deceit when he fired them for striking. Reagandid not get the vote of populist "Reagan Democrats" based on his neoliberal views either. The agenda was sold with a patriotic, hardline, populist face in contradiction to the effete aura of Carter. In France, Sarkozy won on the immigration issue, taking many votes away from Le Pen of the National Front. Today the French are still generally adamantly opposed to the dismantling of their state. Did the French consent to turning their country into an adherent of the "Anglo-Saxon model"? The answer is no. If NAFTA and MFN with China had been decided by referendum, they would not have passed. The problem is that many people are asleep and the debate on economic (yes, material) issues has taken a back seat every time a neoliberal carries through his reforms. Instead the people are drugged with pseudo-moral issues and other nonsense. The reason there are no tanks is because tanks are not necessary WHEN THE POPULATION IS ASLEEP. Soon Obama will win the election, but the neoliberal agenda remains as he strolls through Wall Street for advice and contributions. Everyday citizens prefer to delegate the task of democracy to the politicians, who do NOT have their interests in mind.

- John

July 20, 2008 at 6:40am

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If NAFTA and MFN with China had been decided by referendum, they would not have passed. The problem is that many people are asleep and the debate on economic (yes, material) issues has taken a back seat every time a neoliberal carries through his reforms. Instead the people are drugged with pseudo-moral issues and other nonsense. The reason there are no tanks is because tanks are not necessary WHEN THE POPULATION IS ASLEEP. Soon Obama will win the election, but the neoliberal agenda remains as he strolls through Wall Street for advice and contributions. Everyday citizens prefer to delegate the task of democracy to the politicians, who do NOT have their interests in mind. PATCO endorsed Reagan. The populist Reagan Democrats voted for Reagan. Reagan was a neoliberal, but these workers did not support this neoliberalism. Indeed PATCO was later stabbed in the back severely. Sarkozy ran on immigration, stealing votes from the Front National. Yet the French, even the FN voters, do not want neoliberal "Anglo-Saxon model" imposed on their state. Neoliberalism in itself is anti-democratic because it survives only through deceiving the voting public, turning elections into farces. Look at the Obama v. McCain battle. A neoliberal farce.

- John

July 20, 2008 at 6:54am

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Chait intentionally omitted the fact that the US and British provoked a coup in Iran in 1953, overthrowing democratically elected Mossadeq and installing the Shah, for precisely the reasons Klein outlines in Shock Doctrine: To keep the oil resources available for US and British oil corporations. So, the CIA was sent in to instigate a coup and install the Shah, who was more favorable to US and British oil interests. Now, I wonder why Chait omitted that salient history?

- bmc

July 20, 2008 at 7:39am

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The idea of crisis time being prime time for political change does not originate with Marx or the Soviets. Julius Caesar practiced this principle. At least one of our founders Thomas Jefferson can be seen in letters during the time of the Revolution urging that reforms of Virginia's laws be pressed forward quickly lest the reformist zeal pass with the urgency of the times.

- Jeff Smithpeters

July 20, 2008 at 7:41am

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Klein reminds me of the Greek myth of Procrusteus. Everything must fit into her gory, dogmatic box whether it belongs there or not. What does not fit she must be chop down until it does. Long live the idea that mankind's freedom comes from God, not from government or its promoters.

- billndin

July 20, 2008 at 8:15am

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Jonathan Chait has done us a great service by wading through this painful load of tripe so that the rest of us don't have to. In public school I learned next to no history, I wouldn't have bothered later really, had my father not been a very persistant and determined history buff. If we can begin teaching history as an academic subject and not as political indoctrinization, efforts such as Ms. Klein's would probably stop selling.

- Black Adderess

July 20, 2008 at 8:58am

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Great article, Mr. Chait. One suggestion: The comments sections for these longer TNR articles ought to require registration. People who comment on the TNR blogs, which require registration, are almost uniformly thoughtful and courteous. The comments are actually worth reading, which is pretty unusual. No-registration comments sections are inevitably overrun by illiterates, vulgarians, far-left and far-right conspiracy theorists, bigots, people who type in all caps, et cetera (as some of the above comments illustrate).

- Androscoggin

July 20, 2008 at 11:59am

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Its amusing to see neoliberals and elite centrists work themselves up into a passionate lather, as Chait and some of his supporters do here. Almost like everyone has become a Kossack with their own partisan schtick.

- white cornerback

July 20, 2008 at 3:18pm

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Like Marx and most lefties, Klein preaches dogma as science. In the end , all the arguments are designed to limit the freedom of the masses and impose the view of a cultural elite.

- jorod

July 20, 2008 at 4:24pm

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Another good for nothing article. It doesn't help change the world for the better or add anything concrete to a genuine argument that PEOPLE NEED TO HAVE. Despite your nitpicking, the orientation of Klein's book is spot-on. It is highlighting / popularizing / adding to that old theme WHICH HAS NOT BEEN RESOLVED and therefore returns time and time again despite all the hairsplitting academic poo-pooing and the outright state and corporate attacks - that HELLO! AS A MATTER OF FACT the world IS class divided and the minority section of society (In the old days they were called the capitalists. You know the ones, the owners of the raw materials, the tools of production, the money, land, distribution networks etc etc etc that are used in the process of labour to create the wealth in the world in the form of commodities for sale on a market) No, it is not Big Brother, not the Boogy man, not one dude with a bugle. The individual players can change. They compete and fight amongst themselves. They come from different historical and economic backgrounds of development (uneven and combined so sometimes they can get what they want WITHOUT a coup) and these guys exploit another section of society - the people who work for a wage. The majority section of society. This group for the most part DO NOT OWN capital or (yes, I'm going to say it......) The means of production!!! Not that dreaded word again!!! They used to be referred to as the .....yup I'm going to say it.....The working class!!!! Oh no! block your ears. You know what I think is cool about Naomi? - as opposed to you bend-over-to-the-status-quo-types-in-order-to-further-my-career (and also cause life actually does seem quite rosy from your point of view so why change it?) is that she is a 'proletarianized academic' to use a term from Trotsky. Because at least her emphasis is skewed TOWARD POSITIVE CHANGE. Unlike your defensive critique. Hmmmm.... who benefits from this article?? It seems to me to serve the interests of the yourself and the powers that be that you want to notice you. I thought this article was more of the usual arguments made against the 'left' to belittle and trivialize their arguments. The jist of your criticism is: "Oh my the situation is much more complicated than that. You, Ms. Klein have no idea how complicated it is. You've over simplified it. Only the most intelligent incredibly informed person like myself knows. (But I'm not going to tell you) I know the answers, but I only have time to tell you in incredible detail where you have gone wrong. Look man, I see where your politics lean - and whose side you are on. Looks like you will serve them well.

- Mel

July 20, 2008 at 4:25pm

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The price of gas goes up; let's drill for oil. This is not rocket science or grandiose theory. Corporate interests with benevolent fronts are always looking at the bottom line; for most of the world, turns out the bottom line for some is a bottomless pit for others. But hey, greed is good; deregulate the banking industry; bail the suckers out with tax payer money when they go broke or...what, exadtly tell me. Got AIDs? Well, I have a drug to sell you. To Chait et al, you know let's all get together shut off Manhattan to every entry point and put the Brooklyn Bridge up for sale. Supply and demand, pure and simple. Was the dismantling of the American way of life a conscious decision made by these corporoquasigovernmental types? Of course not. as the fictional sociopath Ridley says, 'all of us like to think well of ourselves." Just collateral damage; that's all.

- CitizenE

July 20, 2008 at 4:26pm

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funny coincidence: i read this review just moments after a story ran on the network news, saying that at least a dozen members of our military in iraq have been electrocuted because of shoddy installations by kbr, which is - wait for it - a former subsidiary of halliburton. i'm not a conspiracy theorist, really i'm not. and while i freely admit my membership in the liberal's eating and drinking society, i was a "libertarian liberal" before it was defined and fashionable to be so. but, gee, you'd have to be able to believe in an awful lot of coincidences to think this, and so many more examples, are all because of random chance. klein's unified theory may not hold up. what absolutely *does* hold up, however, is a smaller-scale unified theory of corporate greed and lack of oversight. and because this isn't the post for it, and i don't want to go off-topic, i'm not even going to start on misfeasance, malfeasance and just plain stupidity in the financial markets...

- efgoldman

July 20, 2008 at 6:52pm

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I heard an interesting story about Ms. Klein. After being the Editor of her College newspaper Ms. Klein decided to become a professional journalist. The Globe and Mail - a Canadian newspaper- had decided to add a hip young lesbian to upgrade its staff and through the doors came hip, young, Ms.Klein who let it be known she was a lesbian. She was hired. After her probationary employment period ended, Ms. Klein discovered that she wasn't a lesbian after all and the rest is history.

- Sid

July 20, 2008 at 8:29pm

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She's Canadian. That explains it all. Apologies to the few non-socialist-commie Canadians that exist.

- JB

July 21, 2008 at 12:43am

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All rich people are not criminals; all corporations are not engaged in a vicious conspiracy against the people and their governments; all poor people are not noble, including hard-working ones; all simple explanations are wrong, including Hayek and Marx. We have been living through a radical conservative assault on the New Deal, which was the reaction to the rise of US capitalist power (since the US was the winner of WWI) and its excesses. There is no point in going further back since modern life begins with WWI. WWII presented the world with an opportunity to achieve a balanced peaceful, civilized (not perfect)period like pre-WWI. However, the Wilson doctrine and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the collapse of Russia set up a situation which could only lead to WWII and instabilities that WWII made worse. The US and the Soviet Union had a chance to build a new world. but they prefered WWII and a half. Regan began the counterrevolution; the collapse of the Soviet Union gave the US, and the Republican party', the feeling that it was the real sole winner of WWII and a half, with the Bush II regime carrying on to extremes. The US has been lucky and unlucky in its leadership and followership at critical points in history. We are approaching a change period now. All we can do is hope that we will be lucky - and there is no simple way to predict.

- oxheadone

July 22, 2008 at 12:25am

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Good

- Joe

July 22, 2008 at 2:22pm

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Reading hard-left diatribes leaves an exceedingly sour aftertaste, like biting into a lemon. While Klein certainly seems to have some good points, the way she wraps them in a one-size-fits-all drab thesis is a huge turn-off to me. When will the Left realize that its starting points (be they knee-jerk distrust of capitalism, instinctive dismissal of whatever is not marginal, or an attachment to romantic notions inherited from other times) are compromising their goals? Or don't they care? I'll exempt Naomi Klein from this since I haven't read her book or much that she's written. But it's not for nothing that the in far Left has became the least effective or interesting part of the political spectrum in the past 6 or 7 years.

- Charles Foster Kane

July 22, 2008 at 4:41pm

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AM's post way up at number 14 is a gas! Both Canada and New Zealand have VERY big government, socialized democracies, with healthcare, welfare, and labor benefit guarantees (a large portion of NZs population "lives on the dole"). What exactly are you talking about? As to Johnathan Chait: I agree with the tediousness of the "mono-theory" in Klein's book, but I find you shrugging off her arguments with innuendo and unsupported counter-facts (accept the Cheney halliburton profit-to-charity document... that's a terrible omission on Klein's part). I'd like to know when and where did Friedman argue against the Iraq war (not saying it didn’t happen... but what’s your source)? Did he just call it “an aggressive act” or did he call it “an aggressive act” AND say it was wrong. One of the things I find amazing about Klien's book is the diligent footnotes and source designations. Where are yours?

- RN

July 22, 2008 at 5:01pm

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One more thing. The fact that Klein’s argument’s border on Conspiracy Theory does not destroy the fact that unfettered Capitalism, again and again, manages to aid dictators and create very wealthy people and very poor people in developing countries. In this country it has managed to create a super-wealthy class while the middle class has been shrinking since the early 1970’s. Keynesian economics and the G.I. bill were both large parts of the reason we have a middle class at all. It helped create the “Ralph Kramden,” labor middle class. The labor protection laws and education funds helped millions of people buy houses and send their children to college; people who never before could have managed (and don’t say it was the post-war prosperity. There was WAY more money and prosperity in the 1920’s and it was all kept at the top).

- RN

July 22, 2008 at 5:33pm

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this is so lame. mel might puke. it's the old "distract-by-name-dropping-i-know-so-much-history-your-marxist -head-will-spin" before you realize i have said nothing and do not really want to change the world in any qualitative way. oh friend of big brother.....i mean, sorry, you really taught me there is no good and bad. it is all much more complicated. and only YOU know the answer. i can only hope (and pray) that you will inform us intellectual low-lifes. we are nothing without you...

- mel

July 22, 2008 at 5:58pm

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Sorry, I do not quite understand what does miss *P.C.* stands for. Could someone explain it to me? TIA, Maria

- Maria

July 23, 2008 at 8:59am

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very beautiful article

- enrico

July 23, 2008 at 9:11am

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That notable Marxist-Leninist Plato observed that the primary cause of war is the desire for "endless acquisition of money" (Rep. 373d et al.).

- the ancients

July 25, 2008 at 2:08pm

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Excellent expose of the intellectual bankruptcy of Klein. The most discouraging thing about this article is not that Klein is so blinded by her ideology, but that the left has elevated her to iconic status. When you want to believe something facts just don't matter anymore. She is the classic case of a propagandist. She is an ideologue and the uneducated public eats it up because she taps into common emotions - typical Marxist strategies.

- torrant

July 27, 2008 at 12:01am

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Klein is such a hypocrite. In her most recent column she gives new examples of disaster capitalism - "And the disaster capitalists have been busy--from private firefighters already on the scene in Northern California's wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill making its way through Congress." That's right Naomi, we should let the homes burn until public firefighters can get there to do the job! And don't help anyone in foreclosure - let the people suffer so long as no bank profits from the deal!!! What insanity. Maybe Klein is a disaster capitalist herself. Didn't she write her book as a way to profit from the recent disasters around the world. Maybe she is in on the plan and was allowed by Bush and the neocons to write her book because they all profit from the controversy. She writes criticism and they write rebuttals - it's all so easy when everyone is in on the secret. What a world, what a world!

- torrant

July 27, 2008 at 12:20am

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The canard that "globalization/neoliberalism has lifted millions out of poverty" rears its ugly head again. Western fans of sweatshops crow about the "fantastic accomplishments" that market reforms supposedly have created for China, while ignoring the obvious fact that ANY economic change -- of any kind -- was guaranteed to be an improvement over Mao's murderous and iept policies. Fact: those millions of Chinese "lifted out of poverty" are STILL living in poverty; their current 16-hour-day sweatshop conditions is simply a slightly less decrepit degree of poverty than what they were living through before, but it's crushing poverty all the same.

- Henry Blankett

August 4, 2008 at 12:25pm

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I expected that the comments would be from those who have actually *read* the book being reviewed. For the most part, this does not seem to be the case. Too bad. The book is well researched, well written, though perhaps too ambitious in its thesis. But Chait's review is guilty of the "front-end loading" generally used to trivialize left leaning writers or activists. The opening part of the review is an attack on Klein's grandparents (why not go back three or four centuries, maybe a Klein was the real model for Shylock?). Of course, if Chait has reviewed George Bush's state of the union speeches by preceding them with a long diatribe on Prescott Bush's Nazi connections, then maybe I'm just missing his standard book review preamble. Typically when reviewers resort to this type of vilification, it's because they can't win the fight on its merits. It's the mark of a loser. Too bad. Chait does raise some points that have merit, but coming from a reviewer who has resorted to the tactics of a loser, the review has about the same assessment value as a diatribe from Rush Limbaugh. Those of you who haven't read the book should at least borrow it from the library, rather than rely on Chait's hatchet job.

- Dennis Brown

August 6, 2008 at 7:02pm

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For all the childish "commie-bashers." Calling someone a commie or a socialist is only an insult if your a right winger with very few actually important things to say. For everyone else (mature right wingers included), it's a political label.

-

August 12, 2008 at 11:55am

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I find Chait’s review of Klein entertaining, because it exhibits so many demagogic tricks aimed at discrediting her argument without ever confronting it. It is fun to go through it to find all the little devices he deploys instead of actually dealing with her formidable arguments and evidence. Most frequently, Chait ridicules arguments instead of ocnfronting them. In taking on No Logo, for example, he cannot generate a real challenge to her branding thesis, so he simply assumes that it is self-evidently wrong and then tries to “explain” why so many people found it persuasive. Chait says her argument "was somewhat derivative of the Frankfurt School, though not as intellectually sophisticated" He then explains the popularity of the book by saying "Yet she managed to make old notions feel new." But he can't seem to convince himself that he has been effective in dismissing the No Logo analysis, so he takes another swipe later, on attributing its popularity to the fact that is publication "serendipitously coincided with the sudden rise of street protests." At no point does he even suggest that its popularity could be based on the quality or validity of its arguments. At no point does he offer even one substantive argument against her analysis. In a few places, Chait actually tries to confront Klein's arguments in Shock Doctrine, but these moments end up without any real substantive argument, just more rhetorical tricks. For example, he tries to rebut her attack on neoliberalism using two intertwined demagogic ploys: "the pot calling the kettle black" argument; and the "attack a straw man" stratey. He defends Friedman's disgusting (but nevertheless accurate) insight that disasters are good times to impose neoliberal reform by showing that many people--including many leftists--have seen disasters as moments of opportunity. His unspoken logic here is that if leftists have said it, then it's okay. He then tries to use the fact that leftists have made the argument to discredit Klein’s argument by accusing her of approving disaster-change by the left and not by the right. Of course Klein does not advocated disaster-change by anyone, and even if she did it would not invalidate her criticism of neoliberalism’s use of it. In the midst of this Chait sneaks in his attack on Klein’s main argument in the book, which he never really confronts elsewhere. He does this with an out-and-out lie (plausible only to those who have not read the book) that "Klein repeatedly implies that there is something immoral about using crises to advance the right-wing agenda without explaining why this is so." First lie: Klein never speaks about rightwing agendas in general--the book is about one specific right-wing agenda--neoliberalism. Second lie: Klein certainly does explain exactly why it is immoral to use crises to impose this particular right wing agenda. The entire book is about how terrible neoliberal reform is, how it ruins people's lives and sucks resources out of the Global South into the hands of mutlinationals. Her critique of Friedman, of neoliberalism, and of disaster-change is always presented as part of her larger argument that neoliberalism vicious and immoral, so it is impossible to miss. In fact, Klein's does not dispute Friedman on the point about disasters being moments propitious for change. She says he is absolutely correct about that. The misfortune is that the neoliberals (led initially by Friedman himself) use this insight to impose anti-people, pro corporate neo-liberal change that ruins lives and impoverishes whole cities, regions, and countries. And here is another good demagogic double play by Chait. In rebutting Klein's discussion of Israel and Palestine, Chait uses ridicule first: ""rather than terrorism instigating the rise of Israel's counterterrorism sector, Klein sees the relationships working in reverse" He then quotes her saying something approximating this. His attitude is that such a position is wrong on its face, even though most of the academics who study terrorism agree with Klein: that terrorism arises in response to invasion and repressionBut Chait makes no attempt to refute this familiar and widely believed argument. Instead he then distorts it by pretending that Klein argues that the Israelis DELIBERATELY created terrorist bombings: Speaking for Klein, he says "So Israel decided [!!!] to provoke bomb blasts in its buses and pizzerias....” And so it goes, throughout the article. If you have read Shock Doctrine, the review is almost comedic. Unfortunately, however, most of those who read Chait’s essay will never read the book itself and discover how funny the review is.

- MS

August 20, 2008 at 1:02pm

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Stephen Glass could not have said it better.

- James A.

November 21, 2008 at 2:09am

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Firstly, I'm always impressed by the honest "unpacking" by those in the comments section of the hyperbolic, standard fare that makes for the hook-chasing we are subjected to in journalism today. I'm also always amazed how a person reviewing a film or a book, chastises the author or filmmaker for using misleading tactics, taking things out of context, and makes these points by doing the exact same thing. It's a dog chasing it's tail that never gets anywhere. Come on. We can accept some gray areas. Was Naomi Klein 100% correct in her over 400 pages of thesis? It's opinion--feel free to disagree with her--but at what cost? You look like a corporate puppet who has to completely trash a well-written, contemplative book that to my perception was not mostly about Klein's opinions, but contained on the ground reporting of what was happening in New Orleans and Iraq. That's how I like to review pieces of work. Did I learn something about Iraq when I watched Fahrenheit 911? Yes. Did everything Moore present seem totally objective? Of course not. How could a 2 hour film possibly paint a completely objective view of our complex world while making important points? You can't. I learned a lot from Klein's book. After reading your review, I feel no regret at all in trusting Klein's reporting -- only regret from reading your baseless attack. I guess you didn't learn much. I guess what stood out to you was how Naomi didn't take a pause to mention poor old Milton really did care about the tragedy because she wanted to focus on how he felt about using the opportunity of it for his own agenda. No, I guess, according to you, she should've repeated that every time she pointed out his exploitative agenda, that he really did feel sorry for those that died. That's what you walk away with from this book. Not the mass privatization of our military and security. Not the $9 billion "lost" in Iraq, or the $2 trillion of missing funds in the Pentagon Rumsfeld admitted the day before 9/11. That's what I found most interesting. And if you want to face the horrible obstacle of listening to a smart informed opinion supporting what is mostly unreported facts about our governments mass privatization since 9/11, read the book for yourselves.

- Sam

January 4, 2009 at 3:36am

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Just read this: it's a decapitation. Itzik Basman

- itzik basman

February 19, 2009 at 7:16pm

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I wrote a similar piece and later edited it to quote this article at length once I discovered it over at The Activist. I'm a radical leftist, but yes, Klein's arguments and conclusions are hopefully simplistic. Freidman wasn't a monster. He was a great economist responding to the stagnation of both the import-substitution, Soviet planning and the Keynesian model. If the world couldn't break into an anti-capitalist, market socialist direction, it would have to back to market fundamentalism. Period.

- Bhaskar

August 12, 2009 at 5:20am

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