Thoughts & Projects : By Mark Pruce: 2012

I've just finished reading Klein's Shock Doctrine and I wanted to put some thoughts on paper before getting right to the next book. Then I decided to blog instead.

Klein's book is a revisionist history of many of the major global events of the last 30-40 years. She provides numerous real-world case studies to support her central thesis that the spread of free-market capitalism has not been peaceful and natural but has been violent and forced upon people in many ways that are all are versions of the same story: an enormous shock comes to a nation or group of people (natural disaster, war, etc) which puts those people into a temporary state of paralysis during which time the acting authority over those people enacts laws or policies that they would have otherwise not accepted under any circumstances. These laws and policies come out of Milton Friedman's guide to free markets and the Chicago School - public institutions are privatized, regulations are stripped away, and major cuts to social spending. Klein is trying to show that it is not incidental that free market policies are nearly always enacted in this formula but that it is principally part of the free market ideology - or, at least, that without a temporary paralysis, no free country would ever willfully choose to institute those policies. Policies which inevitably, according to Klein, lead to the wealth flowing upwards to the top small percentage, massive unemployment and poverty, and corruption (legal or illegal).

This book has definitely helped me to see the recent past through a new lens and I think over time I'll understand better what ideas have stuck with me in a profound way. As much as I find myself agreeing with much of what she is saying in this book - I'm also too much a skeptic to accept anything at face value. And I wish she would give one or two counter examples to her point - just to show that she is being fair with her assessment. But she doesn't and that makes me skeptical. But I agree with her assessment that most nations wouldn't allow this to happen and I think she successfully showed that its widely accepted, if not openly, by free market activists that violent shocks are helpful to their cause and that their ideologies are 'right and just' for nations even if in other circumstances a majority of the country would rise up against the policies. It frustrates me the way capitalism has been equated with freedom but has been forced upon so many nations. It frustrates me how capitalism has been conflated with democracy when, in fact, many nations would not have accepted the free market economic principles if they had been living in, at the time of their application, a true democracy. I know that I was brought up in a culture that conflated free market capitalism with both democracy and freedom - even more so, with the idea that sometimes it is necessary to suspend democratic processes in a time of 'shock'. But what Klein shows, unequivocally, is that this excuse has been used time and time again and that, unless we can get back to a time where we trust our government, we can no longer accept this suspension.

I understand several key issues in global economics and politics very differently now - one important one is the IMF/World Bank. I had, just because of the types of liberals that I associate with, a general idea that these institutions were no good but - much like my understanding of most economic and political issues - I didn't know why or have a deeper knowledge of the issues surrounding them. For the sake of having a complete understanding, I would like to hear conservative responses to make of Klein's points because with this book as my first real-world look into many of these global issues I can't ignore that I've obviously gotten one side of the story. I suspect that I'll end up siding with Klein but I can't full take on the opinions she espouses without learning more.

What she says about debt, though, I don't need to learn any more about before accepting her points. That debt has crippled so many 'developing nations' is hardly a question and the more I learn about debt (from her book and other sources) the more complicated and notorious it seems. Perkin's book 'The Economic Hitman' has added to this belief and the way that debt is used by 'developed' nations and the IMF is disgusting. If the quid-pro-quo of emergency loans for free market policies is as blatant as Klein has portrayed, I can't believe that these organizations can call themselves anything other than free-market blackmailers.

The notion of neocolonialism has always been one that I thought was an adequate description of these types of practices but not only in the way a country or group forces itself upon another, but also in the underlying premise: our way is the only way forward. We might actually be doing you a favor: by withholding money that you badly need to keep your people alive and your society together, we are helping you to see the light of free marketing capitalism which will obviously help lift your country out of the trouble you are in. "We know what is best for you and your people - much better than you do - but we aren't confident enough in our ideas that we trust you'll see their benefits, just in case you don't: we are going to blackmail you with emergency loans."

The influence of the United States in Latin American politics was shocking to me; its yet another thing that I vaguely knew about, learned more from Perkins' book but had never seen it laid out before quite like Klein has here. Its sad and frustrating and angering and disheartening. And I feel naive for even saying that because I think admitting to feel anything real about it at this point is admitting you haven't known for long enough to be apathetic about it yet. But thats my situation - and I'm embarrassed that my country did - and does - things like that. Like encouraging and funding dictators who kidnap and torture activists, while disrupting and assassinating democratically elected leaders because they ran on platforms of democratic socialism or are generally weary of US influence. Learning about these kinds of things make me wonder why more countries aren't anti-US. And then I remember: oh yeah, they are.

Its a shitty feeling realizing you agree with your own country's enemies in some ways. The US has done terrible things in many parts of the world - when exactly was it that we stopped begin the beacon of hope and human rights and upwards mobility?

This question brings to the forefront of my mind a tension that has been simmering as I read this book and Im going to try to put it into words. American has become an extremely powerful and wealthy nation at a very fast rate. We're still a relatively young country and its not as if the entire country is sitting on oil or gold. The very basic tenants of the American dream are work hard, earn, save. Rags to riches, all that. And that, at least at first, seems like a uniquely free market capitalist concept. You need competition to keep people working hard, right? Personal property and bank accounts are how we motivate and earn and save and move upwards socially and economically. But our country was also built on a lot of ideals that are markedly anti the free market notions as they are preached: we the people, united, bill of rights, give us your tired, poor and hungry. We started out inviting the poor and hungry and became one of the richest countries in the world. And we developed a social safety net, social welfare programs, large gov't spending projects on infrastructure, etc. And also I keep thinking about how if America is so interminably intertwined with free market capitalism than how did we ever build such massive undertakings like a public school system which - for all its flaws - is a major part of why poor people still stand a chance at furthering themselves and why the wealth gap isn't larger. And then I think about what free market capitalism preaches and how that does seem to be present in our country today (calls to deregulate everything and the idea that any gov't run institution is evil and communist and will destroy the wealth of the United States). And it just doesn't seem true that these voices have always been the predominant ones in America. If they had, it doesn't seem like we'd be where we are today. We didn't get powerful and wealthy with those ideas - we adopted them once we were alredy wealthy and it seems like we've been downhill since then - greedy, warring, selfish.
It seems like its been only in the last 40 years that these voices have risen. Promising 'trickle down' if only we first allow all of our wealth to 'float up'. Instead it seems like a lie that might be purposely repeated - that cut-throat capitalism is synonymous with American freedoms. Its not and hasn't been. Whats made this country rich and powerful hasn't been the richest people getting richer or unregulated greed or a broken, decentralized (and de-unionized) work force - its been a large lower and middle class working hard to lift themselves up but also knowing that they belong to a country that will pick them up if they slip. A common goal of working to invest in the American economy because if we all work hard and economy grows stronger, we all benefit. But with cuts in social spending, privatized public services, and loose labor laws - where is the benefit? This seems to me like a lack of motivating factors.

I guess where I'm going with that last point is this: a lot of things are not what they seem. What is and isn't American is not so concrete - neither is capitalism, economics or freedom. And the history books - the very notion of history books is a damn scam. They should all come with a disclaimer that events viewed in a history book are not to be taken literally - that history books are not records of the past but interpretations of it. That multiple view points are needed and even that is not enough. Constant rethinking and questioning is needed. The winners cast themselves in Bronze in town squares and their competitors get cast to the footnotes, at best, or cast as villains and evildoers and terrorists.

I know the last parts got a little ramble-y but I think there is a real point that I'm grasping at in there. Klein's book woke me up a little, woke me up from the safety of believing what I was told about America, capitalism, and war. Things are so much more complex than they seem and there are two antidotes that I can see: first, we can't trust what people say without a thorough investigation (not your president or parent or history teacher or journalists - there is no such thing as objective) and second, we need to be constantly educating and reeducating ourselves.

Thanks for reading.
Questions, comments are welcome.