"The Blow From Below!"

“No Is Not Enough – Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need,” by Naomi Klein, 2017

If you’ve never read Naomi Klein, this book reads like a collection of her greatest hits.  It combines the method of “No Logo,” her first book about branding with “The Shock Doctrine” that laid out how disaster capitalism works and finishes with “This Changes Everything,” – whose main theme was that the environmental emergency must lead to a total makeover of capitalism.

Essentially Klein says that Trump and his gang of petro-capitalists and thieves is the logical culmination of the neo-liberal political economy that has existed since the late 1970s.  Going back to the corporate ‘normal’ will not actually solve any basic problems.  So her approach goes against the centrist Democratic line and the heroes of “The Resistance®.”

Klein traces Trumps history from being a predatory real estate developer to a ‘brand’ – essentially putting his glitzy-cheap name on anything he could – universities, steaks, golf balls, buildings, menswear, mattresses, water, cologne – and for all we know, a line of golden toilets.  Besides becoming nationally known as a vicious boss who fires people, (the perfect capitalist reality show) she also reminds us of his role in World Wrestling Entertainment fights.  Essentially his political rallies are similar to entertaining wrestling events – with insult names, dopey chants and simple heroes and villains.  Even his family has become part of the ‘brand’ – sort of the semi-legal version of the Sopranos. 

Which reminds me that the parts of the Harley sub-culture crowd who support Trump are also covered with logos from their boots to their hats.  They are ‘branded’ too.  “Branded, branded, branded”!

Klein focuses on the theme of ‘shock’ – essentially when capitalists use a terrorist attack (9/11), a natural disaster (Katrina & Puerto Rico), a war (Iraq), an economic catastrophe (the Great Recession) or a border crisis to QUICKLY implement extremely repressive, privatizing and exploitative policies.  She is trying to prepare us for an even bigger ‘shock’ coming in the future.  In response, Klein thinks the environmental crisis can be used by the left to ‘shock’ the capitalists.  In other words, 'shock' cuts both ways.  After all, what is revolution but a terminal 'shock' to capital?

The point of the book’s title is that you have to be FOR something, not just against something.  As part of this, she was instrumental in creating a “LEAP” Manifesto for Canada which was signed by 200 organizations.  Its focus is against ‘single-issuism’ – as all issues are connected – and for broad organizational unity instead of single-organization isolation.  The Manifesto shies away from tiny incremental reformist steps - which is why it is called 'leap.'  It intends to counter dystopia with a bit of ‘utopia.’ The “LEAP Manifesto” is in the back of the book and seems more of a broad aspirational document for a rosier future than a focused list of demands.  As such, it fails to be a modern transitional program though perhaps it presages one. 

 

Brazilian Workers Party

Klein almost never uses the word capitalism in this book, because as I’ve noted before, she wants a ‘humane’ capitalism, not a rapacious one. She substitutes neo-liberalism for the term capitalism.  The word socialism is also conspicuously absent, though the descriptions of a future society certainly sound somewhat socialist.  Nor is the subject of fascism ever brought up in the book, although the violent right-wing has been especially active since Trump’s election. She is speaking at the DSA convention in Chicago this summer and that should give you an idea of her social-democratic politics. 

Nor does Klein address the idea of a people’s party or a labor party, a 'green' party or even an independent social-democratic party, similar to the NDP in Canada or labour parties, social-democratic parties or communist parties in Britain, Scandinavia, Australia, Brazil and almost everywhere else. She herself ‘could’ be in the left wing of the Canadian NDP, but there is no sign of this.  By default, this leaves the political field in the U.S. to the Democratic Party – which is her intention. 

But that is Klein.  She specializes in a somewhat hopeful, gauzy movementism, thinking that listing the attendees at the massive women’s marches, name-checking indigenous elders or compiling the same roster of organizations again and again will inspire the reader.  Yet we have seen how many of those organizations have faded since she wrote this book.  Nevertheless, this book is a good compendium of her thought.  So come in and buy it!

Other reviews on this subject below, use blog search box, upper left:  “The Shock Doctrine,” “This Changes Everything,” (Klein) “The People’s Summit,” “Why the U.S. Will Never Be a Social-Democracy,” “Up From Liberalism,” (Jacobin) “The Unwelcome Guest,” “Viking Economics.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

July 9, 2019