Thanks Doug,
It voiced many of the concerns I had as I listened to the book, and put meat on
those concerns. I'd like to add that in order to squeeze historical events
into her paradigmatic model, Klein is loose on what constitutes a 'disaster' or
a 'shock'. Although she focuses on material shocks - bombs, coups, etc. - in a
rundown in the beginning of the book she cites the Mexican debt crisis as a
'shock'.
I think her analysis would have been stronger is she hadn't tried to identify
the military interventions and other disasters as the sine qua non of
capitalism. To ignore the needs of some very powerful capitalists for periods
of calm is to ignore an important facet of recent political economic history.
Consumers tend not to head to mall when bombs are falling on their heads or
their currency is being drastically devalued.
There is a moment in the book where I blanched at her description of the
neoclassical ideology that left me questioning everything afterward. She
described the ideology as viewing supply's influence on demand as akin to the
moon's pull on the tide. This is about as wrong as can be. If supply and
demand are not independent the entire neoclassical model collapses. From where
did she pull this analogy?
Certainly capitalism is not a solely 'economic' system. However, Klein is not
alone is making this claim. I heard a complaint after No Logo that it did not
acknowledge the relevant political economic thought that preceded it. I think
the same holds for The Shock Doctrine.
Troy Cochrane
Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Just posted to the LBO website, my
review of Naomi Klein's The Shock
Doctrine:
.
Doug
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
---------------------------------
Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo!
Answers._______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
