Another Klein-ism

I've got to tell you, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein ranks right up there for me with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for books on aspects of American history that expose the lies we've been taught over and over again.

Here is a long passage from Chapter 11 of Klein's book. It doesn't need any commentary from me because it is straightforward and to the point.

The movement that Milton Friedman launched in the 1950s is best understood as an attempt by multinational capital to recapture the highly profitable, lawless frontier that Adam Smith, the intellectual forefather of today's neoliberals, so admired -- but with a twist. Rather than journeying through Smith's "savage and barbarous nations" where there was no Western law (no longer a practical option), this movement set out to systematically dismantle existing laws and regulations to re-create that earlier lawlessness.

And where Smith's colonists earned their record profits by seizing what he described as "waste lands" for "but a trifle," today's multinationals see government programs, public assets and everything that is not for sale as terrain to be conquered and seized -- the post office, national parks, schools, social security, disaster relief and anything else that is publicly administered.

Under Chicago School economics, the state acts as the colonial frontier, which corporate conquistadors pillage with the same ruthless determination and energy as their predecessors showed when they hauled home the gold and silver of the Andes.

Where Smith saw fertile green fields turned into profitable farmlands on the pampas and the prairies, Wall Street saw "green field opportunities" in Chile's phone system, Argentina's airline, Russia's oil fields, Bolivia's water system, the United States' public airwaves, Poland's factories -- all built with public wealth, then sold for a trifle.

Then there are the treasures created by enlisting the state to put a patent and a price tag on life-forms and natural resources never dreamed of as commodities -- seeds, genes, carbon in the earth's atmosphere. By relentless searching for new profit frontiers in the public domain, Chicago School economists are like the mapmakers of the colonial era, identifying new waterways in the Amazon, marking off the location of a hidden cache of gold inside an Inca temple.