Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism
I would point people who hold such convictions to the work of Naomi Klein. In "The Shock Doctrine", the author argues that ideas have consequences. She shows us some of the horrific consequences of Milton Friedman’s free market capitalism, starting from the forcibly implemented failures in ‘disaster capitalism’ which took place in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s to the present-day US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. She also exposes the disturbing role that psychology has played in developing and spreading this capitalism. By the end of the documentary, it is clear that disaster capitalism is systematic in requiring massive trauma and suffering for the masses while benefiting the few with power. I challenge those who proudly call themselves capitalists to show how this system is any better than communism in terms of human rights. Is this what they thought ‘capitalism’ meant?
Though American citizens, especially, have the duty to learn the truth about the leading role played by the United States in perpetrating what are, quite simply, horrendous crimes against humanity, the information presented in "The Shock Doctrine" is required reading/viewing for anyone whose life is touched by capitalism (all of us). Like the author says, if we want our governments to create a world that is more just for all, "we are going to have to make them do it".
Capitalism rightly defined has nothing to do with “forcibly implementing” anything, much less aggressive warfare. This film is probably a good critique of mercantilism, fascism, corporatism, or some mix of those, but it goes off track by labeling these things “capitalism.”
Capitalism, born in England at the dawn of industrialism, forced people out of the commons and into factories. People were forced to become Labor. No one asked for it and no one wanted it but the capitalists, and they got it because they owned Parliament. Even the king couldn’t stop them.
In the same time frame, the US revolted against King George’s East India Company doing the same thing in the US that it did in India until Gandhi led the movement that threw the bums out. Democracy looked like it would be hard to control, and US capitalists wanted the loans they gave to run the Revolutionary War to be repaid through taxing the people. Shay’s Rebellion, etc. revolted against that idea. Revolutionary War vets were being taxed to pay off the war debt and they revolted. The capitalists responded by calling a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where they wrote The US Constitution. They rammed it through ratification by the states. In the first few sentences after the Preamble (all most ever read), the war debts are legally recognized. The capitalists had won through social violence, forcing their will on an a people whose consent was not sought.
They’ve won every round since then, save when FDR saved capitalists from capitalist overreach, for which they hated him.
I suggest that everything capitalists have ever done has been forced on the people, either through propaganda, dirty tricks, or firepower.
Neoliberalism is corporatism/fascism, and ubercapitalism. Most of the world is in open revolt against neoliberal economic disasters, and the US may be next, when capitalist’s ideologically driven austerity starts to bite.
The self-regulating free market is an ideology that destroys human society. The economic historian Karl Polanyi documented that from the top, in “The Great Transformation,” and he got it right.
We’re living in another time of capitalist overreach and its huge inequalities, since Milton Friedman (and Ayn Rand) acolytes seized the US government in 1980. Since then, the rich have gotten richer at the expense of the poor and middle classes, the social contract lies broken in the dirt, and distraction is beginning to break down as a means of discouraging the people from political engagement.
It’s all force. Capitalism doesn’t do anything that’s not backed up with guns – with the credible threat of overwhelming violence – when all else fails. That’s what Afghanistan is – capitalists wanted to pipe oil to the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan and the Taliban wouldn’t go for it. Now the US, like every other invader since Alexander the Great, is bogged down, stuck in a war that the Afghans have always won. Iraq and Libya are because capitalists want their oil, and they’ve twisted it into being in the national interest to steal that oil, but it’s not working out. If the US were human, it would be called an armed robber and jailed.
What Klein describes is exactly capitalism, bare knuckles variety, the stuff Milton Friedman taught. It’s the WTO, globalism, and corporate governments – or outright kleptocratic dictatorships. Capitalists care little which it is, as long as they get to grow capital to their greedy little hearts’ content.
Everything is linked, look at what’s happening in China…is this not the results of the breathless run into capitalism? In France, we have thousands of examples showing the extreme collusion of governt and Cac40 bosses…medicines killing people are on the market, we are drinking tab water treated with Alumine, the meat is full of antibiotics and hospitals can do nothing against new infections coming up…if this is not the result of the extreme love of money…what’s is?
I think that’s why the author calls it “disaster capitalism”- in theory capitalism doesn’t involve aggression, the point of the video is to show how the system has been manifested in the world. I’m don’t think she could be called “anti-capitalist”, she’s just against this form of so-called capitalism.
Well, I am thankful that I do not live in JBob’s deluded vision of the way things are played out in the real world. I have long been aware of the evils of capitalism emanating from corrupt sources in the bowels of the heart of that particularly vile doctrine, the USA, to cause devastation, despair and untold hurt around the world and even, though in milder form, to its own citizens and those of other western nations under the false mask of freedom. But the work of Naomi Klein and others and this film in particular bring these events into clear focus. Make no mistake, there is nothing good, altruistic or beneficial about capitalism for the majority. It is all a clever illusion, a pyramid or Ponzi scheme where only an elite few accumulate wealth and the power to control the lives of the majority.
The most important piece of information from this movie I think comes right at the end, in this quote: “If we want responses to this economic crisis…” (and I defy anyone to stand up and argue that the world is not continuing to go down an engineered and destructive path of economic crisis) “…that leave us with a world that is healthier, more just, that is more peaceful, we are going to have to go out there and make them do it.”.
Make them do it? Revolution? …but perhaps that is just what they want to see. More reasons to make people disappear. More Guantanamo Bays. But something is certainly happening on the streets of the Middle East to topple US backed capitalist dictatorships (why do you think the US is not too keen to topple Gaddafi, apart from being too broke to raise the cash), and I think it won’t be long before we see similar events on the streets of Europe and even the US as the lights click on in the heads of more people. I’m not sure about Australia. We are generally too laid back here to care much about these things and even have to be coerced by compulsory voting to go out and elect the next group of crappy politicians to form a crappy government from a field of equally crappy options.
I don’t know what “THE” answer is. My response is to remove myself, and my community, as far out of the “system” as possible. Get out of debt and become as self reliant as possible, both individually and as a community.
If you don’t need to earn much money because you are providing for yourselves, you don’t need to pay taxes, or loans. If you instigate a LETS scheme, or barter, even informal trading of skills, the more you can remove transactions from the “system” the more you starve it.
Amen Pete.
I agree with Pete.
It sounds like in the movie that the Scandinavian Social Democratic model is the “golden middle way”. I can ensure you this is pure nonsense, Scandinavia and Norway is a modernists Hell, enforcing pure modernists codes upon people: https://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-04-09/modernism-and-disconnection-life
The woman said “Why did these people hate us?” Well, at least one of the terrorists, Mohamed Atta, an architect by education, hated us for the spread of the modernist viruses and their infecting of traditional Arabian architecture and their once beautiful cities: https://www.planetizen.com/node/63
The operation of “chock and awe?” Well, these people had already “carpet bombed” the Middle East with their modernist structures of “chock and anxiety” through modernist’s anti-nature-architecture. Why this extra operation when they had already fulfilled their damage? Just look to Dubai or the Arab Emirates!
Any system that doesn’t consist of fractals is not sustainable, whatever label you put on it, socialism, capitalism, communism etc. You might say these systems are like watching out through a window lacking fractals, they don’t enhance life. This is like a test, fractals are the order of complexity on the smallest scale, and systems without this complexity are utopia. Just like a big window missing fractals. Still, most people believe a window without fractals improves the view, a completely deceit!
I think “Jbob” had it right — “Capitalism rightly defined has nothing to do with ‘forcibly implementing’ anything, much less aggressive warfare. This film is probably a good critique of mercantilism, fascism, corporatism, or some mix of those, but it goes off track by labeling these things ‘capitalism.’”
Of course it is a problem that the same word, “capitalism”, has so many different meanings to so many different people.
I’m not that attached to the word — but there does need to be a recognized term to describe a system where people have the legal freedom to make their own choices for their own bodies, time, money, and property, provided a choice does not involve *initiating* force or fraud against others.
There’s an excellent 8-minute video on this philosophy at the website of the International Society for Individual Liberty, available in at least 36 languages:
https://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.swf
So what non-prejudicial term would others suggest be used to describe this kind of freedom in an economic sense? Capitalism? Free enterprise? Laissez-faire capitalism? Libertarian economics? Market anarchism?
Your thoughts wanted!
Personally I believe that individual liberty can only take place within the guidance of common pattern languages, which is the force needed to maintain a fractal community/economy. I also believe the pattern of in-groups is fundamental in any pattern language.
The primary problem here is the willful ignorance of the “power-brokers”, poor wisdom & short term finite gains of those in charge and the sheer un-adulterated greed for greed’s sake which has made justifiable capitalism (where one is paid sensibly based on the efforts put in, work done or creativity) in the past to turn into this un-controlled capitalism (where one’s earnings comes from the blood, sweat and sacrifices of others). An evil monster growing monstrous bigger and bigger by the day and un-killable to boot.
All this will lead to long term permanent physical and mental repercussions for humanity and its fragile hold on a finite earth with dwindling resources strip like crazy & lost forever. The “hostile” universe imicable to all intelligent life can only sit back relax like and enjoy itself as it looks on in glee at the sheer idiocy or is it really “real” wisdom/ingenunity as the power brokers/so called “wise leaders” of humanity slowly but surely contribute in so many bad ways of killing humanity and its future viable generations to go “extinct” slowly and painfully in the coming years ahead.
The only satisfaction i get at the end of it all is knowing those who caused this to happen will suffer with their kids/grand-kids and die with all of us in that hell hole created insanity in that future ahead.
Is there still a chance to head off this?….at this point in time…it looks really bleak. And bleaker by the day.
– Interview Franz Hörmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4p4pA8ivZo&feature=player_embedded#at=30