Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

'Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.' Georg Lukács

Friday, September 04, 2009

The Shock Doctrine film

Though Naomi Klein has disassociated herself from it, I thought Michael Winterbottom's film of Klein's book The Shock Doctrine that was shown at the start of the month on More4 was actually pretty good as a critique of neoliberalism and a good introduction to anti-capitalism per se. Though perhaps one might quibble with a few of the details (the overstressing of the significance of the Falklands War for enabling Thatcher's project of smashing trade union power rather than say the cowardice and betrayals of the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy in not supporting the NUM during the miner's strike etc etc), and of course the film - possibly like the book itself - overly focuses on Milton Friedman to the extent that one is left kind of almost feeling that had the guy never been born then somehow perhaps world capital would not resemble the disaster it does today, it is a documentary that is well worth looking out for.

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2 Comments:

At 6:05 pm, Anonymous lenin said...

She says she hasn't disassociated herself, or at least not because she is critical of the film:

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/08/clarification-shock-doctrine-documentary

 
At 11:29 am, Blogger Snowball said...

Thanks for clarifying this clarification...

 

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