The Rise of Disaster Socialism
I've seen the past...and it works
Michael C. Moynihan | October 20, 2008
In Naomi Klein's schizophrenic indictment of economist Milton Friedman, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, it is argued that in times of great social and economic upheaval sinister free market advocates push their ideas of limited government and minimal state interference in the economy upon the vulnerable and the unsuspecting. The major points upon which this argument rests are dubious, if not outright false, and have forced her critics to ignore a more remedial point: Why is it considered sinister that, upon the spectacular failure of Marxism-Leninism, for example, it would be suggested that it was time to give classical liberalism a try? Indeed, why not encourage a scofflaw and killer like Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (or the brutal thugs of the Chinese Politburo) to liberalize the economy? And it hardly merits repeating that both Chile and China today have significantly higher standards of living than Cuba, an authoritarian regime Klein finds little time to condemn.
So it's equally unsurprising that we are now seeing Naomi Klein's thesis in reverse—the rise, amongst many in the pundit class, of "disaster socialism." As markets tumble and the world economy convulses, market-unfriendly ideologues are rushing in, seizing an opportunity to argue that they were right after all; to argue in favor of a rollback of "extreme" capitalism; and to suggest further government regulation and control of the economy. The gravediggers are leaning on their shovels, waiting for capitalism to expire, despite conflicting diagnoses on a patient very much alive...
reason.com |
