The Shock Doctrine

Canadian writer and political activist Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) levies a critique of neoliberalism, arguing that the policies of the free market, particularly those elucidated and popularized by economist Milton Friedman, are being advanced with little democratic consent. In Klein’s view, this happens through the mechanism of “shock therapy,” through which nations take advantage of crisis moments to strategically introduce new legislation when a country’s constituents are too emotional to grasp the issues at hand or employ reason. Klein looks at several important recent geopolitical events, including America’s Iraq War, which exploited crises (for example, the 9/11 bombings in New York City) to galvanize support for issues that would not have been promoted democratically under neutral conditions. Klein condemns this kind of legislating, arguing that it serves only the few who exploit the system, damaging society as a whole. Though the book has been criticized for perceived oversimplification of political issues, it has been lauded by other critics for illuminating an under-examined social epidemic.

The Shock Doctrine consists of seven parts, each of which attacks political shock therapy from a different angle. In Part 1, Klein contextualizes her appropriation of the term “shock therapy” in its origin in psychology. It originated out of an unethical, but secret and technically legal, series of experiments conducted by psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, under the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency, in the mid-twentieth century. Klein then relates the term to the ideology of Milton Friedman, who helped establish the Chicago school of economics, a right-leaning university think tank whose attacks on regulation, Klein argues, validated the consolidation of information and use of secret executive power into intelligence institutions. She contends that contemporary markets are less regulated than those that existed before the Great Depression.

In Part 2, Klein investigates a late-twenty-first-century implementation of the shock doctrine that took place in 1970s South America. Chilean leaders, under the ideological influence of several economists trained in the Chicago school of economics, leveraged a coup that took place in 1973 to install General Augusto Pinochet in the government. Klein notes that these economists were funded in collusion with the CIA and Milton Friedman. She also connects the logic of shock therapy to the practice of torture. In Part 3, she moves on to more subtle uses of shock therapy, arguing that Margaret Thatcher used it in the wake of the Falklands War. Thatcher managed to exploit public sentiment to pass a number of free market reforms in the state of Bolivia with the help of her friend Jeffrey Sachs.



In Part 4, Klein shows implementations of the shock doctrine in South Africa, Poland, and Russia, as well as in various Asian economies during the continent’s financial crisis in 1997. Part 5 elucidates what she calls the “Disaster Capitalism Complex.” Here, Klein argues that the positive economic feedback cycle encouraged by shock logic has led to its increased use, and its elaboration into the corporate world, once businesspeople learned how to profit from it.

In Part 6, Klein talks about the emotional content of the shock doctrine, particularly with respect to the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. After occupying the country, the United States deployed a barrage of propaganda on its media outlets to engender continuous anxiety and legislative support among the United States’ voting members. Klein believes that this is the most pervasive and highly controlled instance of the practice ever deployed. In Part 7, she distinguishes the kinds of people who profit and lose from shock therapy practices. She compares it to the recursive retreat of the upper class into ever more private enclaves as the bulk of humanity is left without adequate public works, sufficient incomes, and jobs.

Klein concludes by outlining the arguments made in attempts to deny the existence of the shock doctrine. She condemns the IMF and World Bank for engaging in propaganda that denies its existence. She ends the book on an optimistic note, listing some instances in which more moral and enlightened politicians are pushing back on policies that destroy and elude the necessary mediation of economic activity. The Shock Doctrine rigorously delineates the pervasive economic problem just as it acknowledges its exceptions and defectors in contemporary politics.