Yes, that book is amazing because we can see what it described when it was
written, played out over and over again. Cuomo's plan to work with Eric Schmidt
and Bill Gates to reshape New York State's public school system is an example.
He talks about getting rid of school buildings in favor of online learning.
That means getting rid of teachers' unions. It probably also means having
technology in every home which can collect personal information on families.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020 10:43 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] The “New Normal” and the Shock Doctrine
The “New Normal” and the Shock Doctrine
https://socialistaction.org/2020/05/11/the-new-normal-and-the-shock-doctrine/
May 11, 2020
By MARTY GOODMAN
Today only 51.3% of American adults have jobs – the lowest number on record,
lower than the Great Depression. We have passed 80,000 coronavirus deaths.
But, even human suffering can make a billionaire’s eyeballs bulge when they
look at the financial fallout. Why? For those at the top able to survive a deep
crisis such as this, the playing field changes. The system re calibrates vis a
vis billionaires versus workers and one boss against another boss through the
elimination of the weakest.
Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador,
2007) is an eye opening and extraordinarily potent book in 2020. Klein’s
central thesis was expressed simply by Rahm Emanuel, the one-time Chief of
Staff in the Obama administration and former neo-liberal Chicago Mayor, who
once said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Its meaning? As Klein explains,
the corporate rulers know from history the strategic necessity of “using
moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic
engineering.”
“Trauma” can be defined as either ‘human made,’ i.e., a War (Iraq), the
economic “shock” of the Margaret Thatcher/Reagan years, the 9-11 tragedy or
“natural” phenomena like the coronavirus, a hurricane or a tsunami.
Friedman famously said that in a crisis “the actions that are taken depend on
the ideas that are lying around.” For post-60’s capitalists and their
Democratic and Republican leaders, the ideas “lying around”
were his.
No matter the calamity, says Klein, tragedies are fresh meat for corporate
barons. As Trump and both parties shower the bloated big corporations with over
$500 billion in aid, virtually without oversight, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic
confirms Klein’s Shock Doctrine thesis — but she adds that it also can be an
amazing opportunity for ordinary working people to force changes.
In an April 6 interview with The Intercept, Klein attacked the stark
inequalities of capitalism that COVID-19 revealed, “It is more lethal for
people who whose immune systems are already weakened. African Americans have
more stressful lives because they have more stressful jobs or multiple
stressful jobs. But also because pollution is unevenly distributed in the
United States because of environmental racism, and so this is an added irony to
the fact that the fossil fuel companies are getting their wish list fulfilled
in the midst of this pandemic and rolling back all of these controls on air
pollution and water pollution.”
“Many workers are feeling their power in a way that they had not previously and
there is a realization that they are indeed essential workers and they have
been treated systematically in ways designed to belittle the value of their
labor and we are seeing work stoppages across the economy and I think we’ll
probably see more of those.”
What Is the Shock Doctrine?
Klein is so right. Her “Shock Doctrine” story began most dramatically in our
time with the free-trade ideology of the Chicago University economics professor
Milton Friedman (1912-2006). Friedman became the economic guru of the fascistic
Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile.
Pinochet murdered tens of thousands of Leftists and trade unionists after he
seized power in 1973 in a CIA-orchestrated military coup against the elected
Socialist Party government of Salvador Allende.
Amidst the horror of military dictatorship, Friedman reshaped Chilean society
with his “free-market” vision.
His reputation on the conservative Right enhanced, Friedman and his
co-thinkers, nicknamed “the Chicago School,” became some of the ideological
founding fathers of U.S. “neo-liberalism,” a modern form of “laisse fare” or
free-trade capitalism. Free-trade means capitalists rip-off huge profits
without obstruction from government regulation, be it through the absence of
labor rights, stock market regulations, or the progressive taxation of the
rich. Government ownership of services are to be rapidly privatized, sold at
bargain basement prices to corporate crooks.
Freidman celebrated the corporate class as social visionaries. The governmental
interventionism of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “New Deal” which
provided social services and minimal labor rights – after mass worker
mobilization, i.e., strikes – was viewed by Freidman’s school of economics as
an outmoded relic of 1930’s liberal capitalism.
As Michal Douglas said in the movie “Wall Street,” “Greed is good.”
Ditto, thought Freidman.
The mood Friedman tapped into was a reflection of capitalism in crisis as
profit margins were being squeezed by international competition.
Capitalists shed all remaining moral hesitations, and remnants of 1960’s
altruism, in the race to bolster the “bottom line.” Naked capitalist greed was
always king, but its psychopathic, me first mantra was updated to give it an
undeserved ideological ‘gravitas’ by Friedman & Co.
Klein’s book details how Friedman’s philosophy re-configured U.S.
economic policy beginning with Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and II and, with
some modification, essentially became the reigning ideology of the Clinton
administration and, subsequent to her book’s publication, the Obama years too.
Capitalist Theory and Practice, or, How Low Can You Go?
Klein used these amongst many examples of the “Shock Doctrine” in recent
history:
The 9-11 tragedy saw the creation of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act’s
surveillance state, both bi-partisan measures. In 2006, Bush II signed the
Defense Authorization Act, granting the president the ability to impose the
powers of marshal law. With the repressive legislation in place came torture
and indefinite detention and all the horrors of Guantanamo, much of which was
performed by private contractors. With the repression also came the increased
terror, harassment and deportation of immigrant workers (ICE), which meant
increased profits for agribusiness and the service industry.
The Shock Doctrine or to use Bush II’s Iraq battle-cry “shock and awe”
was in full view in New Orleans in 2005, a city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Encouraged by a Democratic Mayor, real estate vultures descended upon largely
African American neighborhoods intent on “ethnic cleansing” via the
gentrification of a city traumatized by over 1,500 deaths and the crass racism
of Bush II. Said Richard Baker, a Republican Congressman from New Orleans, “We
finally cleaned-up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God
did.”
The spread of Friedman’s capitalist fundamentalism was not at all confined to
the U.S. In Poland, in the early ‘90’s, following the ouster of the corrupt
Stalinist regime, the U.S. government orchestrated, with the help of the
“liberal” Soros Foundation and the imperialist International Monetary Fund, a
privatization drive that turned publicly held economic institutions into
private, often U.S. held, corporations.
The “shock” of transition threw millions into poverty, bought-off its labor
leaders and hijacked the Polish economy.
South Africa’s epic transition from official apartheid in 1994 was to a
“post-racial” neo-colonial, neo-liberal society subservient to the U.S.
dominated World Bank. That relationship was solidified by neo-liberal deals cut
with imperialism by the Nelson Mandela leadership and his successors. The
double irony was the centrality of the South African Communist Party of which
Mandela was a member. Today, the Black majority is in some ways worse off
economically than it was under apartheid, where a white elite still runs the
country. The current South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, is also
president of Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and is personally worth
$450 million. South Africans complain of an ‘economic apartheid.’
No Time to Lose Our Nerve
On the April 15 “Democracy Now!” program, Klein urged the movements for change
to seize the moment: “If there is one thing history teaches us it’s that
moments of shock are profoundly volatile, we either lose a whole lot of ground,
get fleeced by elites and pay the price for decades or we win progressive
victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to
lose our nerve. The future will be determined by whoever is willing to fight
harder for the ideas they have lying around.”
Unfortunately, Naomi Klein endorsed Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and is
apparently willing to vote for Joe Biden as a lesser evil.
Despite her ostensibly radical analysis and calls for movement building she
advocates – no doubt not the first time – that activists dive deeper into the
graveyard of social movements, that is, the Democratic Party.
Warmonger Joe Biden will not advance Klein’s vision of a just world one single
iota.
But, Klein’s first choice, Bernie Sanders is leading his many followers back
into the swamp of the Democratic Party and “Shock Doctrine”
politics. Too bad for socialists out there taking the bait, including Naomi
Klein.
For a working class alternative, cast your vote for Jeff Mackler, the Socialist
Action candidate for President!
Related Articles
The “moron” Trump’s COVID-19 capitalist cure: Back to work!
May 8, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER
“A quick succession of unhealthy and short-lived generations will keep the
labour market as well supplied as a series of vigorous and long-lived
generations.” – Karl Marx
May Day Protests Call for Workers’ and Immigrant Rights and Housing
Protections; U.S. Predicts 3,000 Deaths per Day May 6, 2020 By BARRY SHEPPARD
May Day saw significant actions by workers in essential companies serving the
general public during the shutdown.
Free them all! Empty the prisons! Let our people go!
May 4, 2020
Why are so many in jail? Here is the fightback narrative: America is a racist
nation, founded on the principle that billionaire and multimillionaire white
men are created equal, and therefore should have equal opportunities to make
super-profits from an exploited workforce of lesser humans, namely working
people.
--
___
Steven Pinker
“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer.
But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming
naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's
highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]”
― Steven Pinker
