The windfalls after the storm

By the time The Shock Doctrine lands on your desk, it’s hard not to feel suspicious. Seven years after her bestselling No Logo, Naomi Klein’s latest book promises to expose how natural disasters and political crises across the globe have been exploited by a cabal of secret operatives seeking fresh slates to introduce draconian financial measures of the variety championed by the late, great Milton Friedman.

From Chile to Bolivia, to Russia, one finds the legacy of Friedman’s economic shock therapy, the idea that sweeping economic changes are best imposed when citizens are reeling in the aftermath of a crisis: a coup, a natural disaster, a terrorist act. In Friedman’s own words, ‘Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.’

The sentiment leads to Klein’s idea of disaster capitalism, defined as ‘orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities’.