ナオミ・クラインの新著のレビュー二つ

ナオミ・クラインの"The Shock Doctorine"という本が最近出た。結構な話題になっている。

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

ネオコンの思想と1950年代のショック療法を並置し、ぶっ壊して（すなわちショックを与え）そこにフリーマーケットのパラダイスを作る（いわば洗脳）という方法論がさまざまな例を挙げながら説明された本、ということなのだが、この本に関する書評を二つみつけたので下記にリンク。比較的ポジティブな評価が前者、ネガティブな評価が後者。後者でウィル・ハットンが書いているソフト・インフラストラクチャーの重要性、すなわち一般教育や健康保障はフリーマーケットの前提条件である、という点に、そうなんだよな、とうなずいた。教育と健康ほどマーケットに合わないものはない。同じ記事にネオコンのブレーンは最近そのことに気がつき始めている（”クラインはそのことに目を向けるべきだ”）という指摘もあるのだが、これはどうなのかなあ。まずアメリカから変わるのなら信頼するが。日本はどうだろうか。教育にしろ健康保障にしろズダボロにしているわけで、なんとも目を覆わんばかり。私はクラインの新著をまだ読んだわけではないのだが、書評を眺める限りでは、今世界で起こっている事象をしるにはよい感じ。"ショック療法"
として共通する現象を分析した点は浅い、ということだろう。

The end of the world as we know it
John Gray: Gurdian Review: Saturday September 15, 2007

There are very few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books. Ranging across the world, Klein exposes the strikingly similar policies that enabled the imposition of free markets in countries as different as Pinochet's Chile, Yeltsin's Russia, China and post-Saddam Iraq. Part of the power of this book comes from the parallels she observes in seemingly unrelated developments. In a fascinating and alarming examination of the underside of recent history, she notes the affinities between the policies of shock therapy imposed in the course of neo-liberal market reform and the techniques of torture that have been routinely used by the US in the course of the "war on terror".
...
But has the free market experiment failed? As Klein sees it, free market shock therapy may actually have succeeded in achieving its true objectives. Post-invasion Iraq may be "a ghoulish dystopia where going to a simple business meeting could get you lynched, burned alive or beheaded". Even so, Klein points out, Halliburton is making handsome profits - it has built the green zone as a corporate city-state, and taken on many of the traditional functions of the armed forces in Iraq. An entire society has been destroyed, but the corporations that operate in the ruins are doing rather well. Klein's message, then, seems to be that - at least in its own, profit-centred terms - disaster capitalism works.

Her ranting obscures her reasoning
Will Hutton: The Observer, Biiks by Genre: Sunday September 23, 2007

There are many lessons from Iraq, but they elude Klein. The fact that the neocons were wedded to an economistic and wrong view of democracy does not mean that the left should be automatically against all forms of market and conceive of democracy as a surrogate for socialism.
...
So The Shock Doctrine is a lost opportunity. It is hardly new that disasters and shocks are often triggers of change; her insight is to apply the thesis to turbo-capitalism and its ideologues. If Klein had been fairer, she would have had a smarter thesis that could genuinely have changed the intellectual climate. As it is, she will be dismissed by her critics as a confused ranter. We need critics of free-market fundamentalism to do better than that.