The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global free market
has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq
In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term
disaster capitalism. Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation,
Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she
witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from
catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic shock
treatment, losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate
makeovers.
The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of
our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast
to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein
shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in
order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world
from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.
At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to
advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the
disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises,
created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as
a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical
economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
