The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics

[Jon_Irenicus]

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine purports to be an exposé of the ruthless nature of free-market capitalism and its chief recent exponent, Milton Friedman. Klein argues that capitalism goes hand in hand with dictatorship and brutality and that dictators and other unscrupulous political figures take advantage of “shocks”—catastrophes real or manufactured—to consolidate their power and implement unpopular market reforms. Klein cites Chile under General Augusto Pinochet, Britain under Margaret Thatcher, China during the Tiananmen Square crisis, and the ongoing war in Iraq as examples of this process.

Klein’s analysis is hopelessly flawed at virtually every level. Friedman’s own words reveal him to be an advocate of peace, democracy, and individual rights. He argued that gradual economic reforms were often preferable to swift ones and that the public should be fully informed about them, the better to prepare themselves in advance. Further, Friedman condemned the Pinochet regime and opposed the war in Iraq.

Klein’s historical examples also fall apart under scrutiny. For example, Klein alleges that the Tiananmen Square crackdown was intended to crush opposition to pro-market reforms, when in fact it caused liberalization to stall for years. She also argues that Thatcher used the Falklands War as cover for her unpopular economic policies, when actually those economic policies and their results enjoyed strong public support.

Klein’s broader empirical claims fare no better. Surveys of political and economic freedom reveal that the less politically free regimes tend to resist market liberalization, while those states with greater political freedom tend to pursue economic freedom as well.

Another moron bites the dust.

Source.

-Jon

[Stranger]

Klein is actually right on several points, the first of which was that the Tiananmen Square crisis was a social-democratic coup against capitalism. Here is Justin Raimondo.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justinchina1.html

THE MYTH OF TIANANMEN

The Tiananmen Square “massacre” is an incident so wrapped up in mythology, most of it generated by Western journalists and their professional dissident friends, that it is nearly impossible for any “revisionist” analysis to be given a hearing. The world saw the Goddess of Democracy, the bright banners and youthful idealism of the protesters, a giant rock-concert held under the gaze of the seemingly incongruous Chairman Mao, whose gargantuan portrait dominates the Square.

Indelibly etched on the popular mind is the image of a lone man standing in the path of an oncoming tank. The tank moves to the left, and then to the right, in a fruitless effort to avoid flattening him. This sequence of events could serve as a kind of shorthand for the events leading up to the infamous incident.

Ensconced in the Square for weeks on end, the students were at first hailed by the radical reform wing of the CCP, and even some of the more orthodox, as the harbingers of a new spirit of “socialist democracy.” Hu Qili, the party chieftain in charge of press and propaganda at the time, was in sympathy with the students’ democratic demands, and gave the go-ahead to the media to open up and begin to report what was happening in the Square. The students were duly rewarded with a front-page photo and adulatory news story in the May 5 issue of the official Peoples Daily.

That is why those discount the recent student-led protests against the bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy as government-staged and therefore of limited significance miss the point completely. These analysts are forgetting that the most significant rebellion against the authority of the CCP was praised and to a large extent engineered by a wing of the party bureaucracy.

Since our own Hans Hermann Hoppe has shown that democracy is fundamentally anti-freedom, we have to agree with Naomi Klein: only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom. No democratic government has ever resulted in an increase in liberty.

[mitcjm]

@Stranger

Since our own Hans Hermann Hoppe has shown that democracy is fundamentally anti-freedom, we have to agree with Naomi Klein: only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom.

I don’t think that the conclusion that “only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom” follows from the fact that democracy is fundamentally anti-freedom. Are not both types of states “fundamentally anti-freedom”?

@Stranger

No democratic government has ever resulted in an increase in liberty.

There, fixed. [;)]

[Sage]

Klein is a turd.

She wrote a 600 page book and neglected defining the central terms of her thesis.

FAIL.

[Stranger]

@mitcjm

@Stranger

Since our own Hans Hermann Hoppe has shown that democracy is fundamentally anti-freedom, we have to agree with Naomi Klein: only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom.

I don’t think that the conclusion that “only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom” follows from the fact that democracy is fundamentally anti-freedom. Are not both types of states “fundamentally anti-freedom”?

@Stranger

No democratic government has ever resulted in an increase in liberty.

There, fixed.

Monarchical or nationalist governments have to be pro-freedom to some extent because that is what fulfills their end. That does not apply for democracy.

[mitcjm]

@Stranger

Monarchical or nationalist governments have to be pro-freedom to some extent because that is what fulfills their end. That does not apply for democracy.

I do understand Hoppe’s point that it is in the interest of a Monarch to maintain the longevity and integrity of his state and that rulers/legislators in a democratic state do not have such incentives. All I meant to say was that from the fact that democratic regimes are inherently anti-freedom it does not follow that “only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom” since one could also say that monarchies are fundamentally anti-freedom.

As for Klein, I understand where she is coming from. I used to be in a similar boat - hating corporatism and despotism and, by association, capitalism. She, like many others, still confuses capitalism with corporatism. A healthy does of Mises or Rothbard and I bet she would come around (although it’s hard for us Canadians, what with all the socialist propaganda we are fed in school).

[krazy_kaju]

Naomi Klein is a tool, she’s been spreading leftist propaganda for years.

@Sage

Klein is a turd.

She wrote a 600 page book and neglected defining the central terms of her thesis.

FAIL.

Dude, you’re on the internet. The proper term is “phail.”

duh d0n7 u kn0 13375p34k?!?

lol

[Stranger]

@mitcjm

All I meant to say was that from the fact that democratic regimes are inherently anti-freedom it does not follow that “only anti-democratic regimes can implement market reforms and true freedom” since one could also say that monarchies are fundamentally anti-freedom.

No, one could not also say that because that is not true. Monarchies are pro-freedom because it is necessary for the monarch to preserve and increase freedom in order to achieve his ends.

[mitcjm]

@Stranger

No, one could not also say that because that is not true. Monarchies are pro-freedom because it is necessary for the monarch to preserve and increase freedom in order to achieve his ends.

Monarchies are pro-freedom? Where do they get their money? Do people give it voluntarily? If not, then are they not fundamentally anti-freedom?

How is it necessary for monarchs to preserve and increase freedom? History does not seem to show that a monarch must necessarily promote freedom.

[Nitroadict]

@mitcjm

@Stranger

No, one could not also say that because that is not true. Monarchies are pro-freedom because it is necessary for the monarch to preserve and increase freedom in order to achieve his ends.

Monarchies are pro-freedom? Where do they get their money? Do people give it voluntarily? If not, then are they not fundamentally anti-freedom?

How is it necessary for monarchs to preserve and increase freedom? History does not seem to show that a monarch must necessarily promote freedom.

Perhaps if a monarch wants to be socially popular and/or socially accepted, but that is really stretching it, aside from reactionary grants of “freedom” to cut aside agents that are competiting for the throne.

[Stranger]

@mitcjm

@Stranger

No, one could not also say that because that is not true. Monarchies are pro-freedom because it is necessary for the monarch to preserve and increase freedom in order to achieve his ends.

Monarchies are pro-freedom? Where do they get their money? Do people give it voluntarily? If not, then are they not fundamentally anti-freedom?

How is it necessary for monarchs to preserve and increase freedom? History does not seem to show that a monarch must necessarily promote freedom.

There is a tradeoff between power and wealth that a monarch must choose from. Should he want to preserve his wealth, he must also preserve freedom.