The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein

One would expect that any serious author would challenge the economic theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics on their merits and the results of the application of those theories in the real world. Unfortunately, Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine attempts to discredit Friedman and the Chicago School by pointing to their supposed connection to the human rights abuses of Augusto Pinochet and the military juntas of Argentina, Brasil and Uruguay.

Rather than a reasoned analysis of economic theories, Ms. Klein marshals invective, innuendo, guilt by association and simple misrepresentation of the evidence to libel Friedman and his theories. Perhaps most bizarrely, Ms. Klein suggests that the mere description of attempts to reform and transform failing economies as “shock therapy” somehow equates to electroshock therapy of the 1950s and subsequent torture by authoritarian regimes in Chile and elsewhere. According to Ms. Klein, Friedman's economic theories can only be enacted in the context of extreme shock that overcomes the natural opposition to it.

For Ms. Klein the decision by Pinochet to accept advice from Friedman and the Chilean economists trained by the University of Chicago forever tarnishes free market economics without the need to provide any evidence or arguments as to its failure as an economic theory. To fit with her description of the application of free market economic theories only in circumstances of extreme shock, Ms. Klein represents the Chilean coup as being undertaken primarily to impose those theories on Chile. As with other hard leftists, she assumes that Allende bears no responsibility for the destruction of the Chilean economy.