Reviews

 

by Lisa Stolarski

The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important books of our time. As a persuasive political writer, Naomi Klein is setting a new bar. Her angle is not that of the psychoanalyst, radical political economist or social philosopher, though she moves confidently through the terrain of these and all social sciences.

According to its publisher's publicity release, America Beyond Capitalism "offers hope for the future." The evidence offered for this hopeful scenario is two-fold: first, that a vast array of diverse micro-level economic alternatives, consistently ignored by the mass media, is developing throughout every region of this beleaguered land; and second, that these neighborhood-, community- and state-based alternatives are heading us towards a "radical restructuring," a new homegrown all-american macro-system-beyond capitalism, beyond socialism, neither liberal, conservative, red, or blue-which Alperowitz calls a Pluralist Commonwealth (PC).

This is a remarkable book. The author, having worked within the World Bank for a decade, knows whereof he writes. And he tells us that almost all development assistance is self-defeating-misguided at best if not deliberately harmful. And that's just the tip of an enormous iceberg that spans across every helping field. That is, as Ellerman puts it, every field in which some humans ("helpers") try to get others ("doers") to do something: parents/children, teachers/students, managers/workers, medical professionals/patients, counselors/clients, etc.