The Shock Doctrine ****

Director: Michael Winterbottom, Mat Whitecross

Year: 2009

Book by: Naomi Klein

A well directed, clearly argued visual summary of Naomi Klein's book which surmises that Milton Friedman's economic solution of unrestricted capitalism not only doesn't work, but seems to be inherently evil, resulting in "disaster capitalism" and "the shock doctrine". It makes good examples of the past, showing how capitalist leaders sneakily passed laws for deregulation of markets, suppression of unions, and privatization of important national industries while people aren't looking, because we are too focused on tragedies, wars or other shocking occurances at the time.

I think her premise is right, and although the film is well done, it falls just short of making a totally convincing argument. I think a Chicago School economist and conservative republican could still make strong arguments against some of the statements in this film. For example, I don't believe that evil men planned these things out, I think its just the nature of the capitalistic system, but that the well-intentioned men only get feedback from the rich, that all their buddies tell them that these changes are good, that they help business, and they assume it's good for everyone, but they don't care to look at the statistics about middle-class wages holding flat for 30 years, while since Reagan, CEO's went from making 40% more than the workers to 700% more. If the dollars go up for the CEO, they ought to go up for everybody in relative percentage... that's the strongest argument against the policies since Reagan, but I don't think this film focused enough on that to drive it home.

The stuff about Chile and Argentina is indeed important history, but I think the film actually spent too much time on those subjects, since military dictatorships that strike down all dissenting voices are more to blame for disappearances than capitalistic economics.

In the US what is relevant is that we do have a voice to dissent, but we aren't dissenting. We aren't speaking up enough for the workers, and what we need in this nation is a worker's revolution of government and the governments economic policies. We need to regulate the big companies and put the strength back in local business.