Book Summary: The Shock Doctrine links decades of exploitation and devastation in the name of economic reform, from Chile's 9/11/1973 coup to Katrina. Because populations usually want high employment and social services, the "reforms" are implemented with manipulation and/or terror. In recent years more and more of the world is standing up against these crimes.

Significance: The poverty caused by shock exploitation around the world is extreme. Violence and environmental damage are often quite devastating as well. The Shock Doctrine is one of the best resources for understanding massive abuses, such as the Iraq Occupation. Crimes against humanity are a tool, not a by-product of the profit crusade. (The "Why" of the exploitation is money.)

Readability: The power of the events described, such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, make the book hard to put down. Reminders connect key events and players. Occasionally the vocabulary is difficult, but most of the content is clear. Note that there are no summaries of the main points, so you will need to mark-up your copy of the book aggressively.

The Exploitation Goals: Wealth and power are the high-level goals. Academics, especially from the Chicago School of Economics, may idealize a brutal, gladiator-style economy. In practice, it is the drive for wealth and power which dominates.

Economic Reform, Advertised Version: "Reforms" are pushed in the name of freeing economies from crippling government constraints. The idea of freedom is important to scrutinize because it is advocated for investors and corporations but not for the general population. ("Freedom" actually has rather a bad history in propaganda.) Going along with this is a shift from the public to the private sector in the name of efficiency and competition. Economic growth and halting inflation are key claims of success.

Economic Reform, Reality: The will of the people (democracy) is bypassed and there are often bloody purges. Poverty explodes, and the middle class shrinks. The people who gain wealth are international investors and often corrupt local government officials. Disappearing and torturing citizens may be long-term tactics. Potential benefits of competition are lost because of massive corruption, monopolies, and economic depression.

Shock Graph: This is a rough, hypothetical example and is not from the book. The purpose is to show how some community attributes might change over time.

A wide variety of scenarios appear in the book. Sometimes inflation weakens the quality of life and contributes to a coup. Sometimes the shocks are natural disasters. Sometimes a population recovers quickly and sometimes decades are required.

Shock Event Timeline: This is a rough event timeline: Shock Era

Entities: The groups pushing and suffering shocks include:

• Corporations: Corporations and their investors are key drivers of shock exploitation.
• Western governments: The US and many other Western governments actively push exploitation.
• The World Bank and IMF: These institutions use national debts to make nations subservient to international corporations.
• The University of Chicago Economics Department: This served, for a time, to legitimize extreme freedom for corporations.
• Shocked population: The general population suffers high unemployment and brutality.
• Unions: Because the unions oppose corporate power, it is the union organizers who are the targets for the worst abuse.
• Political opposition: They forced out of power unless they sell-out. Some may be tortured and killed.

Targets: If a population is completely powerless, the exploitation targets listed below may be pursued.

The tags are rough suggestions and not from the book. Tagging key activities is helpful for planning and monitoring. This is a practice on some large projects.

The Shock Doctrine mostly describes media control and selective law enforcement indirectly.

Shock Spin: These are some of the ways the Chicago School edicts are defended.

• Wealth increased: Average individual holdings may increase because people at the top are becoming wealthier, but this ignores the great numbers of people pushed into poverty. Publicly owned wealth decreases as well. (This is as if New York City sold Central Park to government officials and then bragged that wealth had increased.)
• Inflation stopped: Though the extreme measures may have some numeric benefits, such as stabilizing inflation, the effects are brutal on most of the population. The limited benefits to the greater economy are usually slow to appear. In addition, claims of success ignore the lifeline of nationalized industry, often kept by many governments. Black market finances, such as from Bolivia's drug trade, are also ignored.
• Brutality did not happen: The abuses in the introduction and implementation of economic changes are omitted or denied.
• The locals were unfit: When an economic disaster cannot be hidden, the local culture is blamed. Russians are blamed for corruption, and Iraqis are blamed for sectarian violence.

Defending Against Shock Exploitation: Many communities can reduce or resist exploitation.

• Knowing what comes next: Understanding the tactics helps individuals and communities to think and retain their identity.
• Disclosing backroom deals: Some exploitation is stopped by publicity.
• Organizing: The greatest fear of the establishment is an organized population. (Attacks unfortunately focus on organizers.)
• Asserting rights: The right to keep property and rebuild one's own community are important for ending mental shock and exploitation.
• Prevention: Ideally communities would work with their elected officials BEFORE a well-known risk reaches a crisis. Giving copies of Naomi Klein's book to responsible government officials might be valuable with statements of anger at the exploitation might help. (The book does not emphasize this, but prevention is always worth considering.)

Additional Points:

• Secrecy is a key weapon for abuse.
• The corporate media often supports manipulation and exploitation.
• Both major US political parties use the Shock Doctrine: Republican party actions are closest philosophically to the Chicago School, but many of the Democratic party officials at the national level support support the same policies.
• Market pressure: Investors and business executives quickly punish nations who resist corporate control. Much of this is automatic.
• Obama: Naomi Klein's June 2008 essay Obama's Chicago Boys describes some Chicago School influences on Barack Obama.

Scope: The current shock system is different than the models of exploitation and control used before. Key characteristics of The Shock Doctrine include:

• The "Economic freedoms" pushed by the Chicago University School of Economics.
• An emphasis on business power.
• Extreme short-term plundering.
• The backing of the IMF and World Bank.
• Crushed or anemic democracy.

The US does not generally raise its flag over areas exploited with shock, though US military bases are put in some areas. National resources are more important than expanding the national borders.

Naomi Klein is a fairly young Canadian, which probably makes the Vietnam War rather distant to her. US authors sympathetic to the downtrodden usually focus on US-backed coups and open wars. Instead, Klein describes the rise of exploitation through business. Coups and wars are often part of this modern nightmare, but not essential. Financial institutions, big business, and academia drive much of the exploitation.

George Lakoff's Writings: In publications such as Moral Politics Lakoff describes the emotional packaging of economic "freedom." The Strict Father Model is the one pushed with economic shock. (Lakoff focuses on how emotion and idealism drives politics in the US.)

Future Exploitation Targets: These some potential targets for future shock exploitation. The list is only partially from the book.

• West Coast earthquake prone areas
• Iran: The oil wealth and lack of Western business control makes the country a target, among other reasons.
• Venezuela: Oil wealth and social spending are important here, also.

Michael Moore: Michael Moore's next film, scheduled for 2009, will tentatively include a partial history of US establishment backed abuses around the world. Potentially many of the events in The Shock Doctrine could be covered.

Updated July 14, 2008

(C) 2008 Kevin Pardo