A must read!

Often in this column I have suggested articles, books, and films I believe folks would profit from reading. This week my message is different: I’m not recommending you read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine - I am imploring you to do so. The increased urgency is due to my realization that she has isolated the common thread connecting the miseries produced under the cover of mass psychological shocks like those produced in our own country by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina with economic crises exported clear around the globe.

Since solutions to the most critical challenges facing truly civil societies won’t come without clear understanding of their causes, I believe it is imperative that as many people as possible become conversant with the thesis of The Shock Doctrine. In a nutshell, it is about the privatization of governments for the enrichment of an elite class of owners.

But what if the proverbial "free market" isn't free?!

The Shock Doctrine presents a clear picture of how the goals and mechanisms of University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman’s neoliberal economics (sometimes called neo-conservatism in this country) lay at the roots of the first infamous 9/11 – September 11, 1973, when tanks rolled into the Chilean capital of Santiago to depose democratically-elected President Salvador Allende.

In the 1960s South American governments in Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina had deeply offended foreign multinational corporations by moving toward regulation and even nationalization of major industries such as mining and oil production in order to devote federal money to public works and liberal social programs. Tariffs were being erected to ward off uneven competition from subsidized foreign imports. The result was the rise of a well-educated South American middle class in which workers negotiated fair contracts to spread profits across society. Worse for the multinationals, these “developmentalist” ideas were beginning to gain momentum throughout Latin America, distributing prosperity and economic security across the breadth of populations.

Friedman’s counterrevolution of “free market” capitalism suited corporate interests better. Friedman and his University of Chicago disciples advocated so-called laissez-faire economics (later “Reaganomics” in the United States), characterized by maximum privatization of public infrastructure and services and minimal oversight of business activities. The inevitable monopolization and overuse of resources and lowering of wages were seen as necessary side effects of a larger social good. (Free marketeers reside blissfully above these disastrous social and environmental effects to this day.)

Freedom and democracy? Only for big business!

When Chilean general Augusto Pinochet’s forces overthrew Allende in 1973, the Friedmanites figuratively rode the tanks to take advantage of the state of shock produced throughout the country. As opposition arose to the second shock of ruthless “Chicago School” economic policies installed by Pinochet, enforcement was applied at the level of domestic terrorism, with widespread arrests, torture, and an estimated 30,000 “disappearances” of dissenters never seen again.

Similarly, the shocks of the 2004 Asian tsunami and hurricanes in New Orleans and elsewhere were capitalized upon by corporations colluding with government. Klein shows in agonizing detail how earlier failed efforts to remove poor people from their homes in order to take over lands with profit potential were suddenly consummated by disaster. At the same time, reconstruction contracts doled out under corrupt terms to politically connected firms have resulted in tragic yet predictable failure.

Corporations gone wild!

The Shock Doctrine details how the powerful pro-corporate forces of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have forced nations under financial stress (including Mexico, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, Malaysia, China, and the Philippines) to accept socially and environmentally disastrous economic regimes in order to receive crucial financial assistance. In the wakes of natural disasters and financial crises (often caused by free market pressures) the Friedmanites have been there to enable a brand of growth in the corporate bottom line that explicitly claims to transcend morality.

The invasion of Iraq presented a whole new front in the march of “free markets.” Klein’s research of this manmade disaster produces a frightening yet logical account of how such a morass of suffering has actually been very good for certain types of businesses. As part of Milton Friedman’s legacy, a negative loop has developed in which the failure of free market mechanisms actually opens new opportunities for profit.

The great awakening starts by being informed

As unbridled capitalism has inevitably run out of world resources to exploit, its beneficiaries have turned to a form of cannibalism in order to install punitive economic policies a healthy democracy would never entertain. This kind of system, initially instigated through deception, can only be sustained by force which must become more ruthless as citizens become aware of what is happening. Ultimately, The Shock Doctrine asks us to decide how accurately this describes our world today.

Dave Wheelock, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, lives, works, and home studies in Socorro, New Mexico. Contact him at davewheelock (all one word, lower case) at yahoo.com. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Socorro News, but frequently do.

Copyright 2008, Dave Wheelock; all rights reserved.