Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE is Naomi Klein’s groundbreaking unofficial story of how the “free market” came to dominate the world, from Chile to Russia, China to Iraq, South Africa to Canada. Radically different from the story normally told, Klein’s book focuses on how violence and shocks—perpetuated on people, on countries, on economies— have laid the foundation for economic “shock therapy” for more than three decades. Guaranteed to be one of the most talked-about and debated books of the fall season, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically, and that unfettered capitalism goes hand in hand with democracy.

Two years ago, while reporting on the Asian tsunami, Klein coined the term “disaster capitalism” to describe a pattern of the use of catastrophe to seize public assets for private profit, combined with the privatization of the response to the disaster itself. Tracing the intellectual origins of disaster capitalism back fifty years to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE exposes a cycle of mutually reinforcing “shock therapies,” drawing new and surprising connections between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare, and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantánamo Bay. Drawing on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, Klein shows how the same techniques used to “soften up” and “break” prisoners are being used to reengineer entire societies.

“Naomi Klein has written a brilliant, brave, and terrifying book. It’s nothing less than the secret history of what we call the ‘free market’… compulsory reading!” —Arundhati Roy

“Naomi Klein’s exposé of neoliberal economics is certain to be sensational. She rips away the ‘free trade’ and globalization ideologies that disguise a conspiracy to privatize war and disaster and grab public property for the rich few… a long-needed analysis of our headlong flight back to feudalism under the guise of social science and ‘freedom’.” —Chalmers Johnson

Tickets: $10 advance, $13 door. Available at independent bookstores (East Bay: Analog Books, Cody’s, Black Oak, DIESEL A Bookstore, Pegasus, Pendragon, Global Exchange store, Walden Pond, Moe’s Books; San Francisco: Modern Times)
and at http://www.globalexchange.org/events/naomiklein
Telephone ticket order: 415.255.7296 X244

Benefits: Global Exchange and KPFA Radio 94.1 FM