Disaster Capitalismĭisaster capitalism -taking advantage of disasters to push economic reforms that would otherwise fail-also can’t seem to distinguish between destroying and healing.įor example, when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration intended to completely destroy the existing Iraqi economy and build a radical free-market democracy in its place. He wasn’t wiping their minds clean-he was destroying them. In short, Cameron fundamentally misunderstood what he was doing to his patients. On top of that, many of his patients suffered from new and much more severe symptoms-both physical and psychological-than they’d shown before treatment. However, while Cameron was very successful at breaking his patients’ minds, he was completely unsuccessful at rebuilding them. Ewen Cameron.Ĭameron’s goal was to regress his patients’ minds to infancy, what he termed a “blank slate.” He thought that once all their current thoughts and memories were wiped away, he could easily reprogram them with new, healthy thought patterns. The treatment was pioneered in the 1940s and 1950s by Dr. Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine begins with a description of shock therapy as it’s traditionally known: A treatment for mental disorders wherein electric shocks are administered to a patient’s brain to intentionally trigger a seizure. Instead, economic shock therapy invariably leads to mass unemployment, increased poverty, and widespread starvation, while a few select people become extremely rich. However, as Naomi Klein shows over and over again throughout The Shock Doctrine, this economic plan doesn’t improve an economy.
In other words, it imposes strict free-market policies on the country in question as quickly as possible. What Is Shock Therapy?īriefly, economic shock therapy is a way to quickly improve a country’s economy through rapid privatization, deregulation, and severe cuts in government spending.
It also examines how economic shock therapy gave rise to what Klein calls the disaster capitalism complex: a privatized system of destruction and reconstruction that funnels billions of dollars into corporate pockets.īelow is a brief overview of the key takeaways. The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein, is a study of the history of economic shock therapy, which is a method of (supposedly) boosting a country’s economy through rapid deregulation, privatization, and severe cuts to government spending.
What is Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine about? How does Klein define “disaster capitalism”? Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.
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