La stratégie du choc

As the economic incentive for peace is lost or defeated, and is increasingly replaced by investment in an endless and un-winnable 'War on Terror', and the capitalistic exploitation of disasters, both natural and man-made, there is a danger that one part of human society will begin to look increasingly like Israel, with its walled-off areas, and massive 'homeland security' apparatus…. and the other like Gaza…… This film by Michael Winterbottom, based on Naomi Klein's terrifying book 'The Shock Doctrine :the Rise of Disaster Capitalism', attempts to show how we arrived at this critical point in history. The film is faithful to the themes of the book and makes good use of contemporary newsreels and pertinent interviews, some conducted by Ms Klein herself. An important documentary, thoroughly recommended.

We're all familiar with economic shock therapy, the idea that sometimes a massive destabilisation of the economy is the first step towards recovery. What Naomi Klein argues in her book, 'The Shock Doctrine', is that chaos is not just an occasionally necessary precursor of reform, but it rather exploited or at worst engineered by reform's proponents, because the consequences of the changes proposed would not be accepted by the people if offered to them a la carte in a less pressured environment. Michael Winterbottom's film develops Klein's arguments, and presents a fairly conventional alternative history of the world. But there are still some interesting details: I didn't know that it was Eisenhower, of all people, who first warned about the military-industrial complex; and it's welcome to see a different interpretation of what happened in Chile in the 1970s to the outrageous story told by Niall Fergusson in his recent BBC series, 'A History of Money'. Yet I still felt slightly disappointed by this film, because while it exposes the lies of the new right to be friends of freedom and democracy (by showing how they need to suppress freedom to get their ideas through), it doesn't address the other part of the argument, namely, whether their economic ideas are basically sound. Perhaps it does indeed take unpopular policies to rescue broken economies; one can dispute that this belief justifies coercion, but should a rational people accept shock as a price worth paying? There are lots of good arguments that say no, but the film doesn't make them; the case that equality is an aid to the efficiency of a country, as well as a moral good in itself, is here taken for granted, although this is arguably the key point of difference between left and right. I fear that this film will not convert anyone while the right's most insidious claim, that a competitive jungle is, however distasteful, the best of all possible worlds, goes unchallenged.

The adaptation of Naomi Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine' seems to have been quite convoluted. First Alfonso Cuarón and his brother teamed up with Klein to make a 6 minute short film almost as a way of advertising the book.

This is just a taster for the larger issue at hand. Whitecross and Winterbottom's feature-length documentary is a journey into the meat of the matter. Each of the snippets from Cuarón's film are expanded and the story is told over a grand, even epic, scale. This is the story of an economist called Milton Friedman and his idea. Perhaps not just an idea, given the remarkable effect of Friedman's 'idea' it just doesn't seem like a big enough word, but it will have to do. The idea is one that sounds attractive, it is beguiling in its simplicity and more than that, it offers the chance of a kind of utopia - it is the notion of the 'Free Market'. Klein's book, and this film, describe how Friedman's ideas on Free Market economics went from being a marginalised backwater of economic theory to being the reasoning behind so many international events in recent years. It is the story of how deregulated trading isn't a Utopian saviour but a dangerous and unpredictable beast powerful enough to bring a country to its knees.

The argument is drawn clearly and with enough evidence to be compelling; from the military coups in Chile and Argentina through the right wing governments of Thatcher and Reagan, a stop off with Boris Yeltsin and the collapse of the Soviet Union and ending with our current embroilment in Iraq – Naomi Klein has drawn a path connecting all these events to the economic ideas of Milton Friedman. At points the power of the message is a little overwhelming, it made me angry to see the atrocities committed in the service of enacting national changes. To see the rich get rich and the poor, well the poor get eaten up by the system. It is horrible and brilliant. Sickening and yet so very clever, so smart as to be almost admirable – but that doesn't make it right.

They are preaching to the converted with me, but I urge you to seek out this film. Find it and watch it and understand some of the underlying ideas that run our lives on a day to day and nation to nation basis. A word of warning though, you might get angry.

This documentary that looks at the concept of 'disaster capitalism' which is capitalism which feeds off and depends on natural disasters, war and terror in order to prosper. Famous early proponents of it were Augusto Pinochet's fascist regime in Chile and the neo-liberal conservative administrations of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA. Its name, 'the shock doctrine' coming from the way patients used to act after shock therapy, where immediately after this treatment they became far more pliant, easier to manipulate. If true, I guess some similar shock therapy will be in the pipeline off the back of the current pandemic. Interesting stuff on the whole.

After watching this film with a few friends (one of which was a former World bank employee), we had a rather mixed and somewhat heated conversation in the cinema bar. The film is basically a summary of the book, which talks about the ideas of Milton Friedman and how they have been used to influence world affairs. However, for those of you who may find the film 'superficial' I would recommend the book, as there is much more detail. Regarding the objectivity of the film, I don't believe that it's anti-American or anti-capitalistic (as my world bank friend remarked). Quite the contrary, it is very balanced and in my opinion Klein does not point a finger at a company without first presenting the facts. I think what a lot of pro-capitalists probably find annoying about Klein is that she brings the whole idea of multinational dirty dealings and currents affairs into the spotlight. After all, Halliburton, Shell, BP, the World bank etc. are far from angels when it comes to making money! I for one, commend the producers of this film and Mrs. Klein for a job well done!