Don Hamerquist, “Thoughts on Naomi Klein” (April 2008)

Taken from pages 44-46 (corresponding endnotes on pages 322-323) of A Brilliant Red Thread: Revolutionary Writings from Don Hamerquist. The endnotes have been added to the text here, while the glossary terms (indicated by an asterisk) will link to the appropriate page of the book on the Internet Archive.

This was written as an email to Tom Hanley, a former prison education instructor, who asked for Hamerquist’s opinion of the popular Canadian author Naomi Klein, and specifically of ideas put forth in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

I’ve been reading Klein with my usual cynical bias. Given the unadulterated crap that passes for left political and social analysis, I hesitate to be too critical of her more skillfully adulterated output. But it’s only a momentary hesitation. The surface distinctiveness stemming from Klein’s straightforward hostility to US power obscures, but does not eliminate, the underlying similarity between her analysis and liberal reformism. She is a non-US left-liberal “third way” advocate who looks better by not being home grown—but probably isn’t. There is a reason why she is welcome on Bill Maher’s show and why the well-intentioned Cusack family bases a movie on her work.¹ She challenges, but not too much.

Of course, nothing but good can come out of the journalistic muckraking aspect of her book. It is good to see the two Friedmans² linked and MKUltra tied to structural adjustment.³ It is good to see an approach which begins with the assumption that this country is on the wrong side of virtually every issue in which right and wrong play a role. But the analysis is terrible, unsupportable, and eventually will prove to be very vulnerable to counterattack by overt supporters of the current economic and political powers that be. I’ll only make a few points, all of which you should feel free to challenge, because—as in too many cases recently—I wouldn’t mind being wrong.

Contrary to Klein (2007), the issue is capitalism, not “shock capitalism” or “disaster capitalism”; the issue is capitalist ideology, not a bad “Chicago School”* neoliberal trend versus a good “Cambridge School” neo-Keynesianism.* Her essential argument is that a certain economic doctrine has captured state power and economic hegemony and has seduced ruling elites to the extent that the ruling strata of the ruling class is operating out of the most narrow conceptions of its economic and political self-interest. This is not unfamiliar. It has roots in the “cowboys vs Yankees” analysis of the mid-period in SDS,* not to mention in the Comintern* conception of fascism and the anti-fascist united front.

It has always been difficult for the left to understand that capital rules through force and through hegemony—through repression and through concession, through incarceration and incorporation—and that it utilizes both tactics simultaneously, although not according to a preconceived plan. Klein follows the dominant tendency in only seeing the repression as intrinsically capitalist, and actually removing the concession element into a dream world where it becomes a popular basis for further struggle, not a substitute for it. I’ve written a lot on this and don’t want to pursue the points unless you do. I would just point out that during the gestation period for her “counter-revolution” in the late 50s and early 60s, there was a clear coexistence between “shock” and Keynesianism (Klein 2007, 444). Everything depended on the concrete circumstances. LBJ⁴ was certainly a Keynesian and hardly a Friedman supporter—viz. war on poverty, Medicare— however he freely utilized the equally rotten University of Chicago Sociology Department and popped the Dominican Republic and signed off on COINTELPRO* without a qualm.⁵ Under Carter, at the same time as support for Pinochet and the Southern Cone military actions was going unquestioned,⁶ Andy Young was abandoning Rhodesia and accommodating with ZANU.* I could do a lot more along these lines.

The point is: whenever capitalist power is seen in terms of exclusive tactics, reformist results are virtually inevitable. In one case, it is because a “good” capitalism (Keynesian) is posited as a non-revolutionary alternative. In the other, it is because a limited tactical flexibility in rule is transmogrified into an endless potential for gradual improvements.

The worst part of the book is the final section, which attempts to cobble together the ingredients of some sort of popular counter-hegemonic coalition out of a range of forces covering the gamut from liberatory anti-capitalist revolution through various reformist/reactionary populisms to fascism. This is the essential danger with Klein’s picture of the ascendancy of neoliberalism as a “counter-revolution.” Its other side is that the most motley array of political oppositions—Chávez, Hezbollah, Putin—are assigned an essentially “progressive” coloration.⁷ I want to say only a brief word on the treatment’s economic determinism. Klein explains ruling-class policy virtually exclusively in terms of cupidity—maximizing returns for the elite. This is the basis for the ascendancy of the Chicago School and the explanation of the course of recent history. Strangely, much of the left, and I would assume Klein as well, share in a privileged ruling-class background and education, but have no real difficulty seeing themselves as motivated by things beyond the wallet. What’s the evidence that the balance of their social strata can’t or doesn’t? This gets to a disagreement that I have with Klein—and Chomsky and most of the left. They see a ruling class, but not really any potential for a categorical class opponent to it. Thus, everything reduces to a type of conspiracy where all ruling-class professions about fighting a real enemy are seen as fabrications intended to divert the majority of us from their incredible hoggishness at the trough.

Pretty feeble effort but maybe it will provoke you.