Say's Law on steroids?
At 16:11 29/04/2008, you wrote:
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
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