After the success of “No Logo” Naomi Klein has set her sights on “Disaster Capitalism”
Her grandfather was a Marxist who was fired from Disney for trying to organize the workers. Her father fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. Naomi Klein made her name in the materialistic 1990s by railing against Nike for using dirt cheap labour abroad and against Starbucks for squeezing out the little guys. She became an intellectual celebrity with the publication of “No Logo” in 1999 where she decried the rise of corporations and how they monetized every aspect of our lives and culture. In our post 9/11 world, Klein has upped the ante in her war with the corporations in her latest book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein turns her fury towards American policy since the Second World War and how “disasters” have provided pretexts in which to spread globalization and corporate power at the expense of the poor. Her central thesis is that free-market economics as defined by the Chicago School and in particular Milton Friedman were implemented against the will of the people around the world through disorientation whether caused by war, coup d’etats, or disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
Is Klein right? Is there a conspiracy by corporations and their government partners to cause chaos like war or to take advantage of disasters like tsunamis in order to spread the reach of corporations for the sake of profit? Jonathan Chait of The New Republic doesn’t necessarily agree with her theory in: Dead Left.
