The Shock Doctrine
by Naomi Klein
Penguin, HK$121
Naomi Klein's polemic on the rise of disaster capitalism is a bold argument that should win and lose her fans. Free-market capitalism, she argues, rides on the back of catastrophe with 'shock doctors' wielding the whip and profiting from chaos. The Shock Doctrine looks at the ways in which crises in the past 35 years have facilitated the introduction of radical pro-corporate policies. One example is the privatisation of schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina laid waste the city's public institutions. Milton Friedman, Klein's economic nemesis, described the destruction as a tragedy but also an opportunity. But she says such disaster capitalism amounts to little more than 'orchestrated raids on the public sphere ... combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities'. Readable and eye-opening - although it sometimes feels as though the facts are being made to fit the theory - Klein's book documents the rapid economic restructuring of societies following not only natural disasters but also other upheavals. Klein thus links the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian financial crisis and China after 1989's bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
