naomi klein

from her recent interview in the Onion for her new book, the Shock Doctrine:

In the natural cycles of capitalism, you have built-in crises and built-in catastrophes and new industries and new innovations come out of that and new technology obliterates an entire past industry and revolutionizes the way we live. That is the way capitalism works. But what I mean by disaster capitalism is not those built-in crises that come from technology, but rather a political strategy based on the need for crisis to advance unpopular policies.
...
After the market crash in 1929, the tide really did turn in favor of the middle class and workers. We saw a period over 30 to 40 years where the middle class rose to unprecedented levels in the United States, but not just in the United States, in any country that adopted these types of policies. And it really did work, in terms of creating class mobility. But it really did eat into profits and this stage that we've been living in since Reagan is really about the people in the highest income brackets saying, "We want our New Deal. We don't want to share so much." The basic demands of this counterrevolution, or this revolt of the elites, have all been about taking back those gains—breaking unions, being able to pay lower wages, having the freedom to scour the world for the lowest wages—and it's really been a liberation movement—the liberation of capital from all constraints.

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