"A bunch of bad apples"

I have just finished watching the documentary The Corporation. A very interesting documentary, well ballenced, containing the veiws of both critics of corporations and capitalism and corporate CEOs, overall a good documentary critising capitialism and large corporations basically ruling the world, however to me the most interesting part comes early on in the documentary.

First it explains how lawyers of large corporations were able to use laws originally meant to stop the government from depriving people of life, liberty or property without due legal process to aquire private propety and profit whilst no one person is ever held responisble, all based on corporations being considered a person legally, meaning they have all the rights a person does.  The documentary follows this logic one step further, saying that if corporations are legaly considered a person and so are granted all the rights that a person is granted, then what kind of person are they?  It proceeds to psychoanalyses the 'behaviour' of large corporations to determine their mental state.

After studying a number of casestudies and comparing the corporations' 'behaviour' against the DSM-IV's (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition) symtoms of psychopathy, namely: Callous unconcern for the feelings of others, Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, Reckless disregard for the safety of others, Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit, Incapacity to experience guilt, Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours, all of which had been displayed by the corporations studied, leading to the conclusion that corporations are psychopaths. 

Since I am studying representing political ideologies as characters I am very interested in doing a similar to the study performed in the documentary on the ideologies I am studying. Below is the first in a series of videos that make up the free online version of the documentary:

College students who can't day-dream.

I have recently watched The Shock Doctrine. It is a documentary based on the book of the same name by Naomi Klein. Both explore and explain the rise of what they call Disaster Capitalism, which, according them, has become the dominant economic doctrine over the last thirty years.

The whole idea is based on the psychological effects of sensory deprivation and apply sensory deprivation to entire societies.

 “Sensory deprivation really is a way of producing free monotony.  It causes lose of critical capacity, the thinking is less clear. The subject complains that he can’t even day-dream, and when you have college students that can’t day-dream, you’re in a bad way. I began to think, while we were doing our experiments, it’s possible that something that involves physical discomfort, or even pain, might be more tolerable than simply the deprivation conditions that we studied. Well I had no idea that when I suggested that, what a vicious weapon, potentially vicious weapon, this could be. ”  - Dr. Donald Hebb

Dr. Hebb was part of the team that performed research into the effects of sensory deprivation, he later stopped being part of the research but it continued in a far less ethical manner. The research began to explore how to use sensory deprivation, shock therapy etc to influence people, the aim was to 'wipe' a person's mind and build it from the ground up. The C.I.A took the research and began using it as interigation techniques.

The Shock Doctrine explains how these techniques have been used to spread radical free market capitalist ideologies around the world. The basic idea is that by using man-made and natural disaster to distract the public, they can destroy a country and build it from the ground up in their image.

"In Sri Lanka, in the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami. People who lived on the beaches for generations were prevented from returning so that the land could be privatised and sold off to luxury hotels. And this is exactly what I mean by the Shock Doctrine, the systematic raiding of the public’s fear in the aftermath of a disaster. When people are too focused on the emergency, on their daily concerns to protect their interest” – Naomi Klein

The film presents numerous examples of how this technique has been used throughout the last century. From the military coup in Chile in 1973 to the current financial crisis.

For example in Chile, Salvador Allende’s popular Unity Government was elected into power on a platform of nationalisation of large sectors of the economy. The US did all that they could to distablise the Chilean economy and with General Augusto Pinochet in charge of the Chilean military, work began on a military coup. The military assualted the presidential palace, resulting in the death of Salvador Allende. In the days after Salvador Allende was ousted, more than 13,000 opponents were arrested and imprisoned. Many were tortured.

With the Chilean people in shock the government put into action radical free market policies, planned by a group of economist called The Chicago Boys. The plan didn’t work, inflation increased dramatically. Milton Freidman began advising the government. His policies created unemployment, it became clear these policies favoured the rich at the expense of the poor. Used scare mongering of Marxism to support his policies.

Milton Freidman and Arnold Harberger argued that free market economics went hand in hand with freedom and democracy, however in Chile, where their ideas were being implemented within a military dictatorship, the opposite was true. General Augusto Pinochet ruled as a military dictator for seventeen years, despite Harberger arguing that having a repressive government for long is impossible within a free economic system. Freidman denied any relationship with the government of Chile. 

It goes on to talk about Thatcher-ite britain and the war in Iraq and other examples. It ends on a hopeful note, It points out that the current financial crisis is unique as now the public understands what caused this crisis. 

“This Crisis is clearly understood, by almost everyone as being the direct result of this particular ideology, of deregulation and privatisation... The Shock Doctrine, as a strategy, realise on us not knowing about it for it to work, and what I find most hopeful about the current economic crisis is that this tactic is getting tried because that element of surprise is no longer there. We’re on to them and it’s not working. We are becoming shock resistant.” – Naomi Klein


It was a very interesting and informative film, but it wasn't a fun watch at all. It's a hard watch but it should prove very useful as part of my research, and I highly recommend it, however I still wish to gain the perspective of someone in favour of absolute capitalism, I am considering whether looking into Milton Friedman's work as well as Ayn Rand would be useful.       
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In my unbiased opinion...

For this Project I wish to explore representing political ideologies as characters and using this to examine them in depth, the ideologies I will be examining are Capitalism, Communism, Fascism and Anarchism.

Firstly, I will need to understand these ideologies, what are their goals? what are their reason for following this ideology? and how does it work out when put into practice? I don't want to make a biased and one sided argument, for me the key to this project is to gain a balenced view of these ideologies and examine them from a neutral  and objective stand point. I know that in some cases, such as Fascism, it will be hard to not take a biased view towards it, but I want to understand why someone who supports Fascism would do so, why would they see this political system as right etc. equally I do not wish to support these ideologies either, I simply wish to examine them, I want to know the pros and cons of these political systems.

I have begun to look into Capitalism, by viewing a number of documentaries about capitalism and the financial crisis. Although these documentaries are informative, they are very much against capitalism and so It is hard to gain an unbiased perspective and the view point of those support capitalism. I'm considering whether looking into Ayn Rand would be relevant or not.

Overall I am looking forward to understanding these ideologies and I'm very aware that this topic requires alot of research. This project should be fun.