Interesting review.
Reader comment on: Shock Jock

Submitted by Albar, Jan 25, 2008 20:58

Good review. I wonder if it is not that capitalism requires shock, but any radical institutional change requires a major critical juncture of some sort. The same argument is obviously true of socialism, that it requires a major shock (revolution), to implement. Similarly, the Breton woods system, based on Keynsian policies that Klein advocates was the direct result of WWII.
I think one major flaw in Klein's reasoning is that she equates cause with consequence: her arguments about the Southern Cone dictatorships are not new. THey are actually about 35 years old going back to Argentine political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell who basically argued that dictatorships occurred because mass participation was limiting economic development; and that 'bureaucratic authoritarianism' was needed to 'deepen industrialization.' However, this reasoning was heavily criticized by later scholars because these type of explanations lack contingency and accident. To understand Pinochet's rise to power, for example, it is possible to think that Allende could have just done some things differently, ie. not appoint senior military officials to civilian positions, arm paramilitary supporters, and destroy the constitutional mandate of the military itself. It is not an exaggeration to say that Klein vastly oversimplifies these cases by leaving out these sorts of details and bringing in the 'master plan' narrative of disaster capitalism.

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