The next book I’d like to do for our book club is Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”. The thesis is that the Chicago-style economic right has continually used crises all over the world as a pretext to institute radical free market “reforms”; Chile under Pincochet and Russia under Yeltsin are used as examples.
Right now, the United States is going through a recession brought on largely by a burst real estate bubble that was fueled by an extreme anti-regulation “free market” ideology. There is a large federal deficit in no small part because of tax cuts to the wealthy. This pseudo-crisis is being used as a pretext to slash government spending, destroy the so-called safety net, and end collective bargaining.
You’d have a very hard time convincing me that Americans aren’t now facing just the kind of “shock therapy” that our government once exported to the rest of the world. Elia Isquire details the ways in which even the liberal New York Times and New Republic have smeared Klein.
Bob Loblaw
To be fair, Naomi Klein is infinitely smearable.
She’s pretty much the female Nader, except with even more condescension.
arguingwithsignposts
Can’t we do something like Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential? No offense, but I’ve been beaten up enough by Nixonland.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw:
at first i read that as “with even more condensation.” :)
Damned at Random
That is one of the books I had planned to suggest. I’ve been wanting to read it but needed a kick to get started. (A friend recommended it very stongly)
Another suggestion is either the Authoritarian Spector by Robert Altemeyer of Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean- both involve authoritarian psychology
kestral
@arguingwithsignposts: Heck of a good book, that one. I actually have to keep stealing my copy away from my father; he keeps walking off with it to reread it.
Napoleon
Klein has always appeared to be a complete bozo to me. Despite that her overall thesis is hard not to believe is correct, but at least as she has conveyed it in interviews, in detail it comes across as over the top.
Yutsano
@Napoleon: She’s very evangelistic about her ideas. This tends to fall into the error of overstating ones position to prove your point. That and she genuinely wanted to warn us and thought too few voices were listening, which she was right about.
Brachiator
The crisis, as well as the conservative response is global. Unless the book you cite gives space to the bankers in Germany and the City of London who crafted this mess, or deals with the financial collapses in the UK, in Ireland, in Iceland, its conclusions will be as flimsy as its premise.
It’s one thing to focus on the impact on the US, another altogether to ignore the international background to the story.
Bob Loblaw
@Brachiator:
The book was written four years ago.
lllphd
@Bob Loblaw:
uh, say what?
on what, precisely, do you base these opinions?
Mark S.
That might be a little tough since the book was written in 2007.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: I agree with the sentiment. Nixonland is brutal. I am a little behind on the readings because 1) I’ve been busy and 2) I can only read bits of it at a time and must leaven it with more cheerful things. The book club does not need, in my opinion, to be limited to unhappy, if educational, works. Others may disagree.
Dennis SGMM
Wouldn’t it be more illuminating to read something by a historian who can, perhaps, show how we got here? Although my own studies are focused on another time I’m confident that our commentariat can suggest some very good titles. If not that, then what about a worthy work of fiction? Concentrating on “Look what they did to us!” seems, to me, a way to have the project die.
I lived through the Nixon years and read the estimable Nixon Agonistes so I sat out the Nixonland piece. I think that the idea of sharing a good book is an excellent one.
patrick II
“…continually use and initiate crises…”
Fixed.
BR
A good book to read in parallel is Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy. Because otherwise Klein’s book is about how TPTB screw up the economy, without any discussion how more fundamental issues and without any discussion of what we might do instead.
mclaren
Exactly right. What Larry Summers did to Russia in 1991 with his infamous “shock therapy” he and his cronies are trying to do to America today.
If successful, America will wind up wholly owned by 6 or 7 oligarchs. Everyone else will be a peasant with a life expectancy of 40.
PurpleGirl
@Brachiator: In the first paragraph of the post, Comrade DougJ say that she used Chile and Russia as examples in the book.
JPL
Shock Doctrine would be okay but for historical reference The Warmth of Other Suns is excellent. Diane McWhorter won a Pulitzer for her book Carry Me Home. Carry Me Home highlights the fact that big business wants discrimination between lower classes because it keeps the pay scale lower and helps keeps unions away. It’s the lucky ducky syndrome.
MikeJ
If we’re suggesting other books, howzabout Sarah Vowell’s new book on the land of Obama’s birth,
KenyaHawaii?Unfamiliar Fishes, available for the nook, and probably for other, lesser readers, and certainly in dead tree too.
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree. This is why I think McKibben’s Deep Economy might be a good choice – it’s an easy read, has an overall positive outlook (rather than being solely about dark and sinister things like Nixonland or The Shock Doctrine), and is still educational.
You Don't Say
I vote for The Warmth of Other Suns or Winner-Take-All Politics or American Uprising.
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: I haven’t read Deep Economy; I have, however, read Eaarth. Are they similar?
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
Deep Economy’s thesis is that there are three fundamental issues with our economy; 1) inequality (which McKibben I think rightly observes is a big issue but is well trodden ground so he doesn’t spend much time on it), 2) limits to the global industrial growth model, and 3) human happiness and how it relates to the economy. He looks at these through lots of stories – both the problems and the responses.
I think of Eaarth as being more of an updated version of The End of Nature. The end of Eaarth overlaps a bit with Deep Economy, but not much.
JPL
New idea..We could do Cleopatra because that would help be finish it. I could not read Nixonland because the Nixon years caused great distress. Perlstein is writing a book on Reagan that I might consider when it’s released.
Napoleon
I vote for Winner Take All
300baud
@Brachiator:
I think you overstate the case. As far as I can tell, the US property/mortgage bubble would have been a giant disaster regardless of what people outside the country did. That’s not to say that it didn’t have global impacts or parallel fuckups elsewhere, but I think one could happily draw lessons from the US experience alone. Do you have evidence otherwise?
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: Interesting. I will add it to my reading list. Thanks.
MikeJ
@You Don’t Say: Warmth of Other Suns appeals to me since it is already on my computer in my “to read” pile.
Dee Loralei
LOL, I was gonna suggest The Hobbit, since they are making it into a movie.And it’s a good nerd/geek book. And because I’m just getting damned depressed with the situation in this country. I haven’t been able to keep up with NixonLand even though I think it’s incredibly interesting and well written. I’ve been reading the Nixonland threads and will re-read them as I finish the book, but I had to put it away for my own sanity and psyche. With crazyass election season gearing up and the coming fights over the debt ceiling and next years budget, I just can’t handle a serious book right now. So, please some silly fantasy or sci-fi or other kind of silly or light fiction.
srv
@Dennis SGMM:
We all know how we got here. How about how we get out of here?
Hyman Minsky’s Stabilizing an Unstable Economy. 1986
It’s a bit tough, some math and long, so we could bail out and read his book on John Maynard Keynes’ economic ideas.
Sad But True
Shock Doctrine is the best, most important book I’ve read in at least a decade. Most people I know do not want to read it, which is a shame because it’s the one book I wish every American would read. If every voter read this book (even just skimming it would be fine), then 90% of our current problems would be solved within the next two elections. Especially this anti-union bullshit.
Elia Isquire
Well, obviously, I’m down.
eemom
I just bought the book “Triangle” about the factory fire that had its 100th anniversary last week. That might be a good choice given the current assault on labor unions and the hideous subtext of what all the teapublitard bashing of unions and regulations would lead us back to if the scumbags had their way. Plus it is an interesting era of history, imo.
Nora Carrington
I’m of the demographic poised to jump down the throat of anyone who criticizes Klein as “shrill” or “hysterical” but imnsho she’s both shrill and hysterical. I heard her interviewed on KUOW in Seattle 4+ years ago when the book came out: before Obama, before the collapse, etc. etc. She sounded completely unhinged. Even Steve Scher, the mostly unflappable interviewer, was taken aback.
She’s also probably right, which makes her ineffectiveness even more depressing.
I’d vote for Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class because, frankly, most of us belong to it and as a cohort have done a perfectly hideous job of making effective arguments about the essential coalition between “liberals” and “progressives” and working class whites & all people of color that don’t sound like we just want to make sure we’ve got the biggest box of crayolas.
I don’t know if Hedges’ book is the right prescription or even a prescription, but if we don’t figure that out before 2012 we can just hang it up right now.
MikeInSewickley
As this is my first post at Balloon Juice after being a lurker for years, I think it is appropriate to give a most hearty “Yes” to having folks read this book. I read a lot, being a college instructor, but I took the time a few years ago to read this book.
Anyone who reads it and doesn’t think it is the blueprint being used by our corporate and ruling class is really blind to history.
Thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nora Carrington: Death of the Liberal Class sounds interesting but less than cheerful. Me want cheerful.
srv
I have to say Lewis’ The Big Short is a great read on the background to the guys who foresaw the disaster – and profited from it.
I would not recommend an ebook version. I have thrown the book at the wall a couple of times.
Elia Isquire
@Nora Carrington: I’m not disagreeing with you, having not heard any Klein interviews recently and finding her to be a bit…y’know… last I did; but I’m actually right now about 3/4 of the way through Death of the…and if there’s one thing Hedges is, it’s “shrill.”
Well, ok, maybe it’s actually “full of murderous, righteous, fire-breathing rage”–but you get my point.
lllphd
@Sad But True:
i agree. klein’s thesis is illuminating. the fact that it seems obvious in retrospect (again, written only 4 yrs ago) only speaks to its relevance.
and i don’t really see it as ‘dark.’ sure, it lays out all the dirty data, but are we looking for a book of dire warnings to be chirpy? the book does not come off as defeatist at all, but does emphasize how much we need to know these things in order to do anything about them. if we’re all focused on green stuff (which she is, ultimately, by the by) without being aware of the plans and particulars of cutting us off at the knees, what good is all that optimism?
forewarned is fore-armed, they say. gets my vote in a huge way. especially as i believe john even said a couple posts back he needed to read it.
Triassic Sands
@BR:
Aren’t we looking of non-fiction?
@Sad But True:
Wow, SBT, you have a lot more confidence in the American people than I do.
srv
@Nora Carrington:
Listen to it here.
El Cid
I’ve been saying this over and over. The US elites are now imposing (and trying to go even further) upon us the cruel programs inflicted upon Africa and South America in the 1980s. The “lost decade”, as they called it.
Nora Carrington
@Elia Isquire:
Like I said, I’m just hunting for some answers and if Hedges’ ain’t it, then let’s not waste our time.
And, too, thanks for the laugh.
MikeInSewickley
Forgot to add this.
href=”http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang///id/1054″>
satby
I always advise people to read The True Believer if they haven’t yet. Hoffer wrote it in 1950 so the terms are a bit dated but it predicted the politics of today pretty accurately as I remember.
Nora Carrington
@srv:
Thanks for the link; I was so sure it was longer ago than that I didn’t think I’d found the right show in the archives.
So 2008, folks, not 2007.
MikeInSewickley
Please forgive me for screwing up my posts.
The link to a Naomi Klein talk on Addiction to Risk is at
MikeInSewickley
Nuts…
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/naomi_klein_addicted_to_risk.html
Just copy and paste folks.
Sorry again.
Tlazolteotl
I couldn’t get through Nixonland, but if you do this book I will get it pronto.
Martin
I’d like to read Shock Doctrine, but the arguments to put something a bit more cheerful after Nixonland should be heeded. Don’t break this thing just as it get started. If every other book was full-on political and the ones in between were a bit more random/happy, that’d be a perfectly fine balance. Kitchen Confidential would be an interesting read. Poking at the blogs various hobbies (foodie would appear in that category, as would something on wine/spirits, photography, etc.) in the inbetween books could be fun, and I bet the commenters would love to be able to bring individual expertise to discussion.
And I would point out, for those that think that Klein is a bit of a kook, that shouldn’t be a disqualification for a book reading. In fact, that makes a great opportunity to debunk aspects of the work.
Batocchio
Shock Doctrine and Winner Take-All Politics would be great choices, but I’d also like to suggest Angler by Barton Gellman and The Dark Side by Jane Mayer, two of the best books on the Bush administration. However, neither is particularly cheery, either.
BGinCHI
Or we could read The Tempest.
Hapless Gonzago exiled and while plotting revenge and reinstatement manipulates daughter and enslaves local to do all the dirty work. Revenge by Caliban (not to be confused with Taliban) foiled by Gonzago’s magic (read: military hardware). All white men return to rightful places and Europe chugs on.
Elia Isquire
@Nora Carrington: Oh, no, I like the book a lot. I just wanted to warn you that he’s a pissed off mofo. There’s a lecture of his on youtube, actually, that gives you a good overview of the book.
Anne Laurie
DougJ, I for one will be thrilled to join in if you start a discussion group for SHOCK DOCTRINE. Start it now, don’t wait — there are enough of us to support more than one discussion group here, especially since a blog like BJ self-selects for voracious readers. (And,yes, I have a copy of Klein’s book on my shelf & haven’t had the stamina to take it on without outside support.)
Once we do finish NIXONLAND, I’m planning to try & get people to move on to WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED (Collins). Same time period as Nixon, but with a much more positive outcome.
Bob Loblaw
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well shoot, just go masturbate over The Audacity of Hope then. It’s a rather delightful paean to bipartisanship, after all. Should buck you right up.
Elia Isquire
@srv: Thanks for the link. So far she hasn’t really bugged me out yet…although I suppose one could argue that she underestimates the human capacity to find a way to rationalized self-interested action into a pseudoethical or “ideological” form…
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw: Fuck you, Bob. I was trying to point out that another dark and depressing book might not be the best choice to follow Nixonland. Martin’s suggestion of serious political book alternating with something lighter is, I think, a sensible approach.
srv
@Nora Carrington: Nope, you were correct. The original show from October 2007.
Naomi on Disaster Capitalism.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
hmm….wonder if the “Chicken Soup” series has one for “The Wisconsin Lawyer’s Soul”…..
Josh
Ah, BGinCHI, so Gonzago was behind it all the time? Whoa, maybe that’s why his nephew murdered him in Hamlet.
shecky
I remember Tyler Cowen’s review. I’ll bet the book dovetails well with plenty of folks’ opinions.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I’d rather read Horse Heaven; it’s long and interesting. I kid, though it’s worth a read, really, but like Omnes, I’m behind in Nixonland reading because it’s bad for my health to read too much at a stretch.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@arguingwithsignposts:
Agreed. Let’s have a hiatus on books about evil Republican machinations.
If we want to stay depressed, I nominate “The Long Descent” by John Michael Greer. Or “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. If we want to get educated and non-depressed, I’d go with Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, or “Deep Survival” by Laurence Gonzales.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
If we went that route, I would highly recommend The United States of Arugula, which lays out how American culture moved from white bread (literally) to making exotic and/or ethnic foods everyday items. Very fun read, but with some interesting history, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Cheerful, I said. I did not ask for pablum.
Nicole
What about A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt? I haven’t read it (though it’s in my Kindle, waiting for me) but the reviews were pretty good, as I recall. Here’s the CSM review of it.
I’ll read whatever is next on the list. I’ve enjoyed the Nixonland group. Though two at once may be too much for me so if we start the second group while Nixonland is still going on I may be late to the party. I think I’m going to read Mildred Pierce as a palate cleanser after Nixonland.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Dennis SGMM:
For this, I’d recommend “Albion’s Seed”. Factions in the US are still fighting England’s Civil War between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. Very eye-opening.
Jim Webb’s “Born Fighting” is also good in this regard.
BGinCHI
@Josh: Jesus, Prospero.
Can you tell I’ve been teaching Hamlet for 2 weeks.
Wow, that’s hilarious, now that I think about the slip.
Gian
If anyone wants to see inside job, but didn’t want to buy it rent it, borrow it, steal it or wait for it to que up from netflix, it’s streaming here http://www.openculture.com/2011/04/inside_job.html
for free. the pills or booze it may require to sleep after will be your at own expense
srv
@Elia Isquire: Michael Lewis says in The Big Short that he wrote his first book, Liar’s Poker, to warn people of his experiences as a bond trader at Solomon in the 80’s.
Instead of motivating people to stay away, and lead a productive life, he kept getting letters from college kids on how inspiring his story was, and if he had any other ideas on how to make it big on Wall St.
We need to treat these folks for what they are, a chronic condition in the DSM IV. We wouldn’t let sociopaths teach our kids, why do we let them run our economy?
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Culinary anthropology? :: perk :: I’m in!
lllphd
while i’ve voted for shock doctrine, for those who are looking for something more cheerful, i just started rereading huck finn. seriously; it’s been almost 50 years since i first read it, and what a delight.
really seriously, though, at some point this book club should decide to reread grapes of wrath. did that a couple of years ago and was astounded at how relevant it remains. jaw-droppingly so; some of the monologues could have been written yesterday with hardly a name change. it’s astonishing. and still such a hopeful story in many ways.
as for klein, those of you who want a very level and comprehensive interview with her, search her name on democracynow for her most recent appearance there. i frankly find her work amazing, including the film the take, which i highly recommend. documents argentine workers who essentially open up a closed factory where they worked before the country went bankrupt and made it a cooperative. of course, once they started making it work, the ‘owner’ – who’d fled to europe – wanted it all back. things actually get violent when the gubmint thugs get involved, so the woman also shows some courage. in addition to intellectual courage.
dadanarchist
This is just my opinion but I think that you should skip it and read two books by the English Marxist David Harvey instead:
– “The New Imperialism” (2005)
– “A Brief History of Neoliberalism” (2007)
IMO, Klein’s book, while fleshed out with juicier examples, cribs much of her argument from David Harvey.
dadanarchist
@Dennis SGMM:
In addition to the two books I mentioned above, I’d also recommend “The Long 20th Century” by Giovanni Arrighi. Parts can be a tough slog of Marxist jargon but he argues that the sort of financial instability we are currently living through is part of the capitalist cycle.
He also wrote a book just before he died called “Adam Smith in Beijing” which I’ve yet to get around to.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@BGinCHI: I was really confused. I thought perhaps Stoppard had done an alternate Tempest, or something.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Have you read Old Filth or The Man in the Wooden Hat? Both are delightful.
Martin
@Yutsano: See… that’s what I was looking for.
BGinCHI
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the damn Italians and their brother-usurping/murdering/wife-stealing ways.
Wish Stoppard would do another Shax thing. The world needs anything it can get from him.
lllphd
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
yeah, jared diamond! either collapse or guns, germs….
i think, to split the diff with the point of shock doctrine and something more generic, collapse would be a great choice.
Elia Isquire
@srv: That’s a good point. It is a very certain type of person (overwhelmingly male) who is drawn to being a trader/BSD.
EDIT: I’d second the recommendation of Harvey’s “Brief History.” I haven’t read Klein’s book so I dunno how cribbed her argument is, but Harvey’s book is really good and readable and smart and rox.
andy
Yup- Shock Doctrine is an awesome book. It really does dig in and show the Grifter DNA and MO. I think jumping from Nixonland into Shock Doctrine makes a lot of sense, too, because they share the character of Kissinger (Klein spends a lot of time unpacking Chile and Allende’s overthrow, which Kissinger was balls-deep in ).
I guess the most important takeaway from it, though, is that people get over their shock, and eventually hit back, so you can’t call it a complete downer.
Arclite
@Damned at Random:
Got it sitting on my bookshelf, but haven’t had the heart to read it w/o anyone to discuss it with (wife is Japanese and it’s way beyond her comprehension). Having a place to vent my anger when reading this will finally inspire me to get started on it.
jinxtigr
I’ve got Kitchen Confidential. It’s quite awesome and I re-read it already, would love to do it as a book club :)
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl:
This is a political talking point irrelevant to what happened in global financial markets.
@300baud: RE:
The crisis, as well as the conservative response is global. Unless the book you cite gives space to the bankers in Germany and the City of London who crafted this mess, or deals with the financial collapses in the UK, in Ireland, in Iceland, its conclusions will be as flimsy as its premise.
I’m not sure what you are getting at here. The economies of Spain, Iceland and Ireland were devastated as a result of the financial markets mess. The UK had to bail out various banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, similar to what happened with bailouts in the US.
The Goldman Sachs unit in the City of London was key in designing the credit default swaps strategies central to the market bubble mess.
This is just basic information. It astounds me that people think that the US was some special example of the housing bubble mess.
And here is a little nugget from November 2007:
This ain’t Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. It ain’t just US banks. It is a global fuck of the middle class and poor.
VidaLoca
@dadanarchist:
dada, thanks for the suggestions.
I’d also like to support the recommendation of “Disaster Capitalism”. I read it a year or two after it came out (that is, roughly 2-3 years ago) and I’ve been recommending it and giving it away to friends as a gift, since then. I think it’s a good vehicle for putting the “what” of what we’re seeing right now, into a broader context. As for the “why”, other works (including some already suggested by others here) are probably better.
Cat Lady
My suggestion for some day is to read Violence and Compassion. Or anything by Joseph Campbell, but I highly recommend The Power of Myth, which was recorded as a series of dialogues with Bill Moyer at his absolute best. This has been my bible through these troubled times. All of this craziness has happened a multitude of times before, throughout human history, in different milieus with different characters, but the problems are human problems and can be transcended with consciousness raising. So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
More gossip and sociology than anthropology, but that’s what makes it fun. James Beard was a very strange man, and yet he’s still a huge influence among American chefs more than 25 years after his death.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Elia Isquire:
Not really. There are several types of people who are drawn to trading, some of whom aren’t nearly the monsters you seem to think. I just had dinner with a couple of them on Friday night.
BR
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
I second this, but not for the reason of staying depressed. I unexpectedly found Greer’s book to be amazing in its wisdom. (And I’d read 30 or so books on similar topics before I read his, but somehow he brings the perspective of history to the subject of “where is our civilization headed” and it makes for an enlightening read.)
NobodySpecial
“Shock Doctrine” is an excellent book, and would make a great book club entrant. As far as Klein being ‘shrill’…well, we could say that about a number of dirty fucking hippies who turned out to be right in the end.
John - A Motley Moose
I didn’t take part in the Nixonland discussion, although I did read some of the early threads. The main reason I didn’t participate is that I’m 64 years-old. I lived through those years. I already know more than I’d like to about Nixon and the politics of those times. Shock Doctrine, otoh, is on my reading list. I bought myself a nook and just got it a couple of days ago. I put together a reading list in the days before it arrived. Shock Doctrine was one of the first non-fiction books I added to the list.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@BR: OK, “depressed” was overreach. I agree with you: I found his book to be the most positive outlook on the energy descent I’ve read. It certainly beats the Mad Max Doomer porn.
His blog posts are all first-rate, too.
patrick II
@Nora Carrington:
@srv:
Thanks for the link. I listened to Naomi’s interview,(it was on 9/17/08 by the way). She was remarkably prescient. If you are undecided about whether to read her book, give it a listen. If you have only a few minutes, listen from about 44:00 to about 49:00 where she anticipates the political arguments from the right that have happened over the last few years, Obama’s likely response, and explains why she wrote the book.
And just to add. I think one of the reasons she is called shrill, besides anyone who clearly states facts in opposition to our repulsive status quo is called shrill, is that she is an attractive young woman talking about serious matters that only someone who looks like Dick Cheney should address. Shrill is a feminizing word, and is meant by the right to be that way. Get past that. She is as smart as a whip.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I’m probably not going to be following the book club much at all, so feel free to ignore what I say, but there’s a phrase for all of the political books being suggested: “preaching to the converted.” Most of you don’t seem to want to read and discuss books here to learn. You seem to want to read them to be reassured about things you already believe. What the hell is Shock Therapy going to tell you that’s new?
I’d also argue that Russia is a terrible example of the thesis as to what is wrong in America. The problems in Russia were and are political, not economic. It may seem like the same thing, but it worked backwards. In the US, what you have had is people leveraging their economic power to take control of the political system. In Russia, it was that a bunch of people who already controlled the political system leveraged it into controlling the economy as well. The idea that Russia is an example of libertariansim and a belief in a lack of regulation is dumb. That’s just not what happened.
If you look at the eastern European countries that developed well functioning democracies, the evidence is overwhelming that something like the shock therapy was extremely beneficial. The most successful of those economies, Poland, was also the country that adopted free market approaches most consistently. Just about the worst performing, at least until you get into the Balkans (which is a different set of countries altogether) is Hungary. For a variety of reasons (one of which, ironically enough, is that they had had just about the freest eastern European economy prior to 1989) they avoided shock therapy the most.
The most difficult element of moving from the communist systems to the more liberal ones is the question of privatization. This includes both the question of selling off AND CLOSING DOWN the inefficient state run enterprises, and figuring out how to distribute the shares of the firms and the proceeds of any sale. Russia never really closed them down, which is why saying that it’s an example of shock therapy is so dumb; they skipped the most essential step of the process. You just had the old Soviet economy handed intact over to a bunch of cronies.
None of this is to say that I think the thesis in question is wrong with regards to the US. I think it’s pretty damned accurate. Thus a part of the reason I don’t have much interest in Klein’s book. I don’t think it’s going to teach me that much. This just doesn’t have anything to do with Eastern Europe. From what I can tell, she has this part just flat out wrong, and thus another part of the reason I don’t have much interest in reading it; she may be right in a major part of her thesis, but I don’t have any confidence that she knows what she’s talking about. The extremely disparate starting points of the US economy in 1980 and the Russian economy in 1989 are hugely important.
AAA Bonds
Ron Paul one of only four House Republicans to request earmarks for 2011 budget: 51 earmarks requests totaling $358,303,155 from libertarian favorite
Care of the new incarnation of the eXile, the people you’d probably want to read on the topic you’re discussing, since unlike Klein, they built their careers on opposing these policies in the countries first subjected to them.
BR
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
That’s why (among other reasons) reading Deep Economy or The Long Descent would be better than the Shock Doctrine: both books deal with issues that I’d bet most folks here don’t know too much about.
AAA Bonds
I suggest you read The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia if you want an entertaining and powerful exploration of what happened in Russia in the 1990s.
For one thing, unlike Klein’s book, it will challenge you. Liberals will sometimes feel uncomfortable and even angry reading it – at the authors, not at the people you’re being instructed to hate. (One of the authors is Matt Taibbi, and I’d suggest that you can’t fully understand his Rolling Stone pieces or even Rolling Stone’s current journalism without reading this book.)
Klein’s book is a good way to read someone repeating your thinking about the topic. The eXile book is a good way to shake it, and perhaps strengthen it.
And definitely, if you’re looking for something more cheerful, my suggestion fits the bill. Be prepared to reexamine your expectations of what ‘cheerful’ means, as well.
John - A Motley Moose
@AAA Bonds: Is this snark?
You Don't Say
More two cents from me: I vote against Shock Doctrine. I already understand what I want about that: rich people take advantage of chaos in countries and markets to make themselves richer. I am in no way belittling the book, I am sure it’s powerful and worthy of anyone’s time. But I’d rather read something like Winner Take All Politics which, while still preaching to the choir as someone else put it, would give me some knowledge to do my small part to effect change.
Comrade DougJ
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
You’re got it completely backwards. I have a lot of misgivings about Chomsky-Nader type analyses of the world. I’m curious how convincing this book will be.
This isn’t a Chomsky-Nader commentariat, I think Klein would challenge many of us.
Comrade DougJ
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I think they are largely cultural. Do you know any Russians? If you do, I think you will agree that it is cultural.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Comrade DougJ:
Yes, I do. I think that the problems are cultural only in the sense that pretty much anything that happens in a country can be chalked up as something cultural. That’s no more true of Russia than it is here. As such, it’s a pretty boring comment on its own. The interesting question is asking what PART of culture is the source of the problems. With regards to how screwed up the Russian political/economic situation is, the roots lie in the political culture rather than the economic culture.
So, I stand by exactly what I said.
As I said, I’ve been sufficiently unimpressed by the arguments of hers that I’ve heard that it doesn’t seem like much of a challenge to me. I’d say pretty much the same thing about Ralph Nader. I already know the man is an egotistical, shallow asshat, going back to just how bad his analysis has been of everything I’ve looked at. Why I would want to take part in a book club designed mostly to retest that particular assumption eludes me.
I’ve never read any Chomsky directly, so I can’t say how I would find him. That does mean that, if I wanted to read someone from the Klein/Nader/Chomsky axis, it would be a pretty easy choice to decide which of them it would be, and Naomi Klein isn’t the one.
patrickT
If you understood Klein as well as you pretend to you would know that economic problems cannot be separated from political problems. There is no is/isnot. Economics is in part politics.
5x5
I would like to read “Shock Doctrine” as a group. It’s in my book stack. I’m fairly ignorant of economics (it hurts my head.) I’d like to read a discussion that would help me understand it better.
Also on the stack:
“The Red Tent”, “Fiasco”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, “The Defining Moment; FDR’s 100 Days”, “Before the Storm” (Goldwater), “Tear Down This Myth” (Reagan), “The Dark Side”, and “The Big Short”.
I’m also up for Twain or Steinbeck. I agree “Guns, Germs, & Steel” was good. “The Wordy Shipmates” & “Freethinkers” are really good books and not depressing.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@patrickT: Did you read the rest of what I wrote? I specifically addressed exactly this point by going through the ways in which what happened in Russia bears little resemblance to what has been happening here.
lllphd
@Brachiator:
methinks you might be confusing doctrine with means. while you’re absolutely correct in addressing the role of the various power financial institutions, what klein focuses on is the direct strategy in these countries (chile and russia are simply the examples klein focuses on; she hardly limits her hypothesis to just them, but instead sounds the warning that it’s rampant).
it’s good that you are versed in this particular aspect of the cancer that has now spread just about everywhere, but to take the attitude that derivative theories out of germany are THE culprit is narrowing a highly complex disease. to my mind, it’s at least as important – if not more so – to be aware of the overall intent and purpose as it is to know the details of the tools.
just sayin’.
lllphd
@patrick II:
thank you for pointing this out!
i interestingly did not feel entirely comfy as a woman noting that this woman who is sharp as a tack and spot on was being dissed because she was a shrill woman. better coming from a guy; thanks.
(and i do not get the ‘shrill’ thing, or that she does terrible interviews. in an earlier post where john said he should read the book, i responded to such a comment with my reaction to her interview in the studio with amy goodman, in which she was so personable and direct and articulate, even making a point to look around the studio and ‘include’ that audience in the conversation. she is amazingly comfortable with herself, and yes, attractive and wicked wicked smart.)
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@lllphd:
If she’s using what happened in Russia as an example of what’s happening in America, she’s also wicked, wicked wrong.
lllphd
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
wow; this is a stunning argument to read the book. actually, for YOU to read the book.
you have quite the fully formed opinion about how wrong klein’s thesis is without having read it, and are quite convinced you could not learn a thing. it may not be preaching to a converted you, but you are clearly already converted to …something.
while i have no doubt you are more versed in eastern european history than i am, i feel your knowledge may be getting in the way of seeing the larger point. the overall agenda is oligarchy, from whichever direction it must be moved and achieved, chile or russia, iran or the US. the book is not about ‘shock therapy’ but a doctrine of creating financial crises in order to have an excuse to eradicate rights and take over resources.
so, if you read it you might actually learn something about that.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@lllphd:
In which case, it sounds like a very tedious and boring book. It appears that the thesis is that people are going to do what they can in order to gain more wealth and power. Does that really surprise anyone?
Where it could become interesting is in seeing what they will do in different environments to do so and what good ideas for preventing destructive instances of that are. However, an absolutely essential element of that is understanding where and how things are different.
The cautionary lesson of the United States over the last 30 years has been that too little government control over the economy is a very dangerous thing. The cautionary lesson of Russia over the last 20 years is that letting the government have too much control over the economy is a very different kind of dangerous thing. Saying that they are examples of the same sort of thing is far more likely to obscure any useful elements of the story than to demonstrate them. That is why I pointed to the rest of post-Communist Europe back in first post on the subject. If you go from analyzing the problems of the US and use that analysis in any sort of direct way to prescribe policy for Russia or Poland, you’re likely to do a lot of damage, and the same thing is true in reverse.
However, if she has dealt with that, great. If so, it says something good about her and something bad about a number of posters in this thread, who have said that she does use Russia as an example of the problems we face. That’s really what drove my posting: people who said they liked the book and tried to describe it. If their descriptions are accurate, it sounds thoroughly wrongheaded.
Comrade DougJ
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
That argument at the end didn’t make much sense to me at all, sorry.
lllphd
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
oh jeebus, please don’t make us read chomsky. i mean, the man is clearly brilliant and knowledgable and all that, but his writing is as dry as desert sand, and just as void of life. always informative, into excruciating detail, but without the first hint of prosody or life.
he speaks this way as well, though occasionally slips in a joke, but even those are drydrydry.
funny you list these three as if they are our only choices. and for the life of me, i can’t fit klein in with nader and noam to save my life. smart people with good ideas that happen to be accurate? she is anything but egocentric, and seems too personable and passionate to be dry. just missing the grouping criteria you’re using.
lllphd
@patrickT:
another excellent point i appreciate your making. thx.
patrickT
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
First, if you don’t think the rich aren’t nearly entirely in total control of the polity here in the U.S., particularly the republican party, we start with a fundamental disagreement. Second, what the U.S.now and the U.S.S.R.then had common were social institutions moving being privatized during times of crisis. Its an analogy not an equivalence — not everything will be exactly the same but there are enough similarities, particularly in the goals of the privatizers, to learn some lessons.
lllphd
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
how the hell would you know?? you have not even read the book!!
seems awfully presumptuous for you to dismiss her comparison when you don’t even know how she crafts the mappings. there may well be ways in which the two situations are different, but there are no doubt ways in which they offer valuable insights.
again, seems you are letting your presumptions restrict your ability to imagine you could possibly learn something from someone else’s perspective.
jo6pac
@satby:
yep
Comrade DougJ
@lllphd:
I’ve been trying to read Chomsky and it sure is boring. I find him fascinating though, because I think his analyses are mostly right, yet he’s completely wrong (in my view) about American politics.
That’s why I’d like to read someone like Klein. I may not agree with her politics at all, but I think her basic point is right and I’d be curious to see how convincingly argued it is.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@lllphd:
If it’s funny, blame DougJ. He’s the one that linked them.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@patrickT:
Your first error is in thinking that I ever denied this. In fact, if you were reading, I specifically said that it sounds to me as if Klein’s thesis holds true in the United States. What I deny is that there is a lot of similarity between how this has come about in the US and what has happened in Russia since 1991.
This is either wrong, or so general as to be meaningless. The primary problem in the US is not that social institutions were privatized. It’s that people who already owned private economic entities leveraged that power to gain control over government. That is something very different.
I’d also argue that what happened in Russia wasn’t social institutions being privatized, either. I have trouble seeing GAZPROM as having ever been a social institution, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that it has, in any meaningful sense, been privatized. It’s owned by the people in charge of the government, and who have been in charge of the government this whole time. It’s still attached to the Russian state like a lamprey.
Beyond the lesson that human beings tend to be self-interested pricks and that people who have one type of power will usually try to amass other types as well, no, there really aren’t. The lessons of what to do about it are very different.
Brachiator
@lllphd:
While I think that the GOP has been opportunistic, their strategy is to use anything and everything to advance their agenda. So, for example, you hear nonsense about Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac and their role in the financial crisis because the GOP wanted to kill these agencies.
But again, when you see that at one time a German bank was the largest mortgage holder in Cleveland, this easily gives the lie to such fairy tales, but also makes it harder to spin tales of expert conservative strategy behind a financial bomb.
Now you miss my point.
Banks are international. The British and American branches of Goldman Sachs, among other investment houses, were in the forefront of developing these crap mortgage schemes, which from the beginning were used early on in Spain, Ireland, Iceland and other countries. And as barriers to lending came down, more international banks and insurance companies wanted in on the sweet deals. Canada was one of the few countries that maintained regulatory barriers, but again this has always been a global issue, not simply, primarily or mainly a US issue.
The closest thing you can come to deliberate bad intent with respect to Republicans and others is this: after the S and L mess in which people actually went to jail, the GOP made sure that laws were repealed which provided for criminal penalties for financial misdeeds. They deregulated like madmen and prohibited states from enforcing their own financial rules, but I don’t they had a clue about how the financial industry would use the free hand they were given.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@lllphd:
Did you notice the word “If” in my post, or were you too busy wanting to argue? “If” indicates that one is setting a condition and that what follows it is a premise, not a statement of fact. If that’s what Klein was saying, then she’s wrong.
Look, I have over a hundred books sitting around the house that I haven’t gotten to reading yet. Like everyone else in the world, including yourself, I have to make presumptions about a book inform my decision as to whether or not to read it. If you don’t think that you do the same thing, you’re delusional. If you want to argue that my presumptions are wrong, then do so. Simply pointing out that I am making a presumption won’t do anything to change my mind, because I knew that already. However, it is not a presumption formed out of thin air. It is formed from having listened to her talk about the book a couple of times and from seeing what people who liked the book have to say about it. If (Do you see the word “If” there?) she is arguing that what has happened in Russia provides much meaningful information as to what has happened in the US when it comes to an oligarchy’s plans to take power, then she is using the fact that there is an oligarchy in both places doing so to obscure that the initial conditions were so different that there’s not a lot of meaningful comparisons to be made as to methods.
Here’s an example. The 9/11 Truthers are obviously a bunch of nutters whose arguments lead us astray. The equivalent set in Russia, namely those who think the FIB was behind the September 1999 apartment bombings, are not obviously nuts. There is some actual evidence to suggest that they might be right. They might not be, but it definitely does need better investigating than it’s ever likely to receive.
There are plenty of other ways in which it’s not a good comparison. It’s just not a good fit. However, if, as I said before but you seem to have ignored, Klein is not making any such direct comparison, then it would need re-evaluating. So far, though, there have been people who said that is what she does, and no one who has actually said that she doesn’t.
lllphd
@Comrade DougJ:
wow; you sure nailed him. the stunning analyses and wrong conclusions can be such a problem for academics. at least, american academics. i’m reading name of the rose by eco, another linguist, right now, but he’s european, so he gets that organic matters (like politics and murder) do not conform well at all to deductive reasoning. or inductive reasoning, for that matter. far too much slop for those tidy systems to accommodate.
eco has a terrific passage where he actually walks you through the process, socratic style, of proving a wrong conclusion where every ‘logical’ step in the analysis is accurate. just stunning. bottom line, he says, is “solving a mystery is not the same as deducing from first principles.” chomsky clearly misses this point, certainly in linguistics. amazing how much sway he continues to hold. (aside: i’m writing a book right now that challenges him, though he’s not at all the focal point and i hardly mention him, precisely because i actually feel his linguistic analysis is pretty irrelevant. ooh, that was pompous. clearly i find him fascinating, too.)
but i don’t know that i’d ever considered chomsky’s politics ‘wrong’, except that he seems something of an anarchist. now that i think of it, because his focus is almost exclusively on the details of policies and their consequences, he never gives you any big picture, or any idea of what he thinks these ought to be. it appears he assumes the world shares his first principles!
i don’t think chomsky thinks in big picture terms. that’s what makes reading him so difficult. it’s a lot of details that are kind of related, but he doesn’t hold them together too well, no big themes or stated principles to move the journey along. it’s no fun for writers to constantly trumpet their talking points, but it is nice to get an occasional nod in the general direction of a clue. otherwise you start suspecting there is none.
lllphd
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
sorry, ttp, but now you’re just being tedious. this is especially true because you have not read the book. what’s up with that??
and just for the record, you contradict yourself when you say on the one hand that there is no comparison between russia and the us, and on the other that the comparison is tedious because all powerful people want more power, ho hum all the same.
what’s up with THAT?
lllphd
@Brachiator:
ah, we disagree on precious little. i would be the last one to suggest republicans were clever enough to craft any strategies, especially ones that work. they’re puppets in all this, craven and eager.
klein seems in her interviews to stress the role of the international banks, so you might want to be aware of that. she was exquisitely aware of their role in the film, the take, so i doubt this point escapes her.
it seemed your initial complaints assumed she left that out; i have to doubt that. we’ll only know if we read it.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@lllphd:
Well, if you take out my statements as to what kinds of comparisons between the US and Russia are faulty, then, yes, it would look contradictory.
You know, for the first several times you took my statements out of context and misrepresented them, I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. No longer. Either you’re completely clueless, or you’re dishonest. Either way, I’m done.
Djur
Chomsky, Klein and Nader are all pretty different, although Klein kind of sits between and overlaps Chomsky and Nader, who are quite different.
catpal
Shock Doctrine gets my vote for a good book discussion.
I am currently reading Griftopia by Matt Taibbi which is amazing writing.
On my list is also The Backlash by Will Bunch which covers the total crazy of the TeaNut people and media madness.
Nixonland is very interesting history, but I needed to read something a little more relevant to today.
pepper
i read shock doctrine. it would be a great choice, as would griftopia. if you want another book more relevant to today that will have you throwing things, i recommend the big short by michael lewis. covers a lot of the same ground as griftopia. lewis and taibbi write with different styles, but both are great reads.
lllphd
griftopia works for me, as well. though i’m getting news this morning that may signal my inability to take on the project of a book group at all, so ignore my input, i guess.
this will surely make mr. t-shoe happy. as if anything could.
;-)
numbskull
@Bob Loblaw: Oh, well. As long as you’re making an argument…
ornery curmudgeon
Tissue Thin Pseudonym convinced me … Shock Doctrine needs to be read, so let’s read it!
The book is obviously important and prophetic, and maybe we could even start coming together on ideas. It’s not the end, we can read another. I’d also join in with Griftopia and the Big Short.
lllphd
@ornery curmudgeon:
hey, you may be orn’ry, but i’m rolling on the floor here. thanks for the belly laughs; made my day.
and yeah, sure seemed to me the more he said, the more compelling the case to read the damn book!!
Original Lee
I think alternating between heavily political and lighter fare is an excellent idea. Kitchen Confidential would be great. Alternatively, Water Baby is a very interesting read, especially since there are now museum exhibits using images from Alvin in many museums. Or “Letters from America” by de Tocqueville would be cool – that’s been on my “to read” list for a long time.
matryoshka
@srv: I know this thread is deadish, but damn, I can’t leave a book thread alone. I think Shock Doctrine is a great choice, and even though I have already read it, I would love to read it again and discuss it with others. I just finished The Big Short, too. I don’t find either of these depressing, because I feel better when I actually know what’s going on and understand it. I do not like having the vague feeling that I’m being screwed by unseen, unknowable forces. Both books are illuminating, Klein’s in a more big picture, psychological sense, and Lewis’s in the “here’s how it all went down” sense. They are different animals, each very worthy in its own right.
mpbruss
Here’s another vote for The Shock Doctrine. I’ve had it for a few years but never had the time to get all the way through it. Based on what I’ve read, the quality and sheer volume of reporting she does in the book is impressive. Even if her larger points are unsurprising, there are plenty of interesting examples that have not been widely reported, like how New Oleans’ school system was gutted and reformed while there were still people trapped in the Superdome during Katrina.
Michael57
Shock Doctrine is an awesome book. I think what seems to some in this thread as self-evident in the book’s argument is due to the book’s own influence. Before she wrote it, people were not as focused on what the US was doing in South America and elsewhere. I also think that people need to read this book in the context of the Obama administration, to understand that this is not a Republican problem but an ongoing theme in America’s imperial temptation.
El Cid
My preceding comment was marked as spam. Presumably because I linked to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Please un-spam it.
jh46inaz
Gee – as soon as I saw the suggestion of a book reading thingy, this is the first book I actually DID recommend. No one seemed to take much notice though, guess my name isn’t well-enough known here. Now, it’s everyone’s favorite book to mention. Funny that . . .
Jason
@MikeInSewickley: You’re in Sewickley? I’m up at Slippery Rock U. What’s your gig, you at RMU?
Jason
@catpal: Taibbi’s chapter on Greenspan is the finest long-form insult I have ever read. Reading it is like watching somebody get kicked in the nuts every thirty seconds for a half hour. And knowing that the person really, really deserves it.