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Old 09-11-2007, 08:03 AM   #9 (permalink)
roachboy
 
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part 2, from this morning's guardian:
Part 2: The erasing of Iraq   click to show 


so in this bit, klein provides an explanation for that odd phase of unchecked looting that followed the american arrival in bagdad--you remember, the phase that was marked by that staged photo-op involving pulling down a saddam hussein statue in the way that statues of stalin once came down. and you can add the occupation then to the long list of disasters brought about by neo-liberal "shock treatment"


that said, i have two objections to klein's piece so far:

1. i wonder about the shift she is trying to argue for in how one thinks about the relation crisis/disaster<--->neoliberal shock treatment and
2. she likes the metaphors associated with the friedmanite expression "shi9ck treatment" a bit too much.

these kind of converge in that i think the record of disastrous consequences of neoliberalism speaks for itself. i wonder (a) how explicit the political linkage is between disaster and neoliberal "remedies" for the people who implement the policies. this because for some reason i am inclined to see these folk as well-meaning fuck-ups and not as malevolent.

thinking about it, i am not sure why this is the case.
i wonder where the line might be that separates wholesale historical ignorance (the history of actually existing capitalism is already a thorough-going critique of the idiocy of neoliberal ideology--it is not new, it is recycled ricardo and adam smith applied as if the previous 150 years of capitalism never happened) and malevolence lies.
and i wonder what the consequences are analytically from shifting away from focus on the record of such "shock treatment" inspires fiasco to imputing Evil to the agents who are responsible for its implementation.


another way of framing the question: if you read part 2 on iraq and think about it, it's clear that by 2003 the consequence of "shock treatment" neoliberal style were well-known, even if you assume a total ignorance of the history of actually existing capitalism and its replacement with those tedious diagrams typical of intro to micro and macro economics courses (those simplistic hydraulic diagrams which are confused with something other than straight capitalist ideology for reasons that i will never understand.)

so maybe by 2003, klein's take on these folk is unavoidable--but it nonetheless seems somehow too easy.

you can think about neoliberalism as an attempt to reduce the political consequences of a period of rapid socio-economic re-organization for the state by rolling back its purview. privatization then is not about increasing efficiency so much as it is about reducing political damage. it creates a cul-de-sac around problems. if something goes horribly wrong, who are you going to complain to? how will political movements hold private firms to account? it can be done, but the indirectness of links to the state creates the space for added levels of action, all of which would remain inside the general framework of capitalism.

that means privatization is also about protecting the class structure which benefits from the existing order from the socio-economic consequences of increased uncertainty by depoliticizing the social order itself to the greatest possible extent. it is from this angle that the reading of the ideology itself as malevolent and those who implement it as sociopaths (or near to it) follows most directly.

maybe all this is an aesthetic objection: i prefer to focus on the damage, klein proceeds by explaining the damage by recourse to speculations about the intent of those who advocated the programs which resulted in that damage.
or maybe this is a trade-off that distinguishes mass-market critics from those who traffic in the gift economy of academic writing.

it follow that i am suspicious of how much use klein is making of the imagery associated with "shock treatment"....i suspect she's going for something like a marat-sade view of neoliberal-style capitalism. something just feels too easy peasy about it. its almost like the metaphors themselves do most of the demonstration about intent, about claims as to intent. but they do this by associations with (amongst other things) old school types of "management" for the clinically insane. this part on iraq for example, prominently features a quote that describes the looting of the iraqi national museum as a kind of lobotomoizing of the country....the erasure of memory would then be a precondition for neo-liberal actions, an illusory tabula rasa across which this ideology can become prescriptive.

but there is also a way in which these are the characteristics of the ideology itself--of the wholesale historical amnesia upon which it rests.

at the same time, it is long overdue that folk begin moving away from restricting their political thinking to the myriad problems engendered by the bush people as if the united states is some island marooned alone is a distant galaxy and not an active agent in the wider world which inflicts its surreal political and economic "ideas" on others--and it is well past time that folk stop dissassociating american conservatism and neoliberal doctrine. and it is well past time that neoliberalism no longer be understood as a functional worldview--it should not be taken seriously--it should be dismantled. one way to get there is to simply present its record.

so metaphor questions aside, this is an interesting project.

the only potential downside of it is that, in the states anyway, the circulation of klein's book may be such that she only preaches to the choir.
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Last edited by roachboy; 09-11-2007 at 08:13 AM..
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