Canada's Leading Public Intellectual

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Larissa MacFarquhar appears to have limited critical capacity when it comes to political or economic ideas, but her profile of Naomi Klein is nevertheless insightful. Klein comes off as an incoherent bundle of reflexes. She has passions, prejudices, animosities, an appealing streak of punk nihilism, a cynical and savvy strategic sense, and no ideas. Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, come off as so saturated in familial left-wing politics that their ideology, such as it is, seems less a set of propositions that might be true or false than an ethnic identity or tribal commitment that can neither be chosen nor forsaken. Bred-in-the-bone cultural assumptions rarely cohere when articulated; their logic is emotional. Which explains how Klein can bounce so blithely and unintelligibly from a milquetoast Canadian faith in government to a petulant, anarchic distrust of large institutions.

MacFarquhar writes:

Klein doesn’t have much use for political parties. When she is asked about this, she explains that she has seen liberation movements betrayed by the politicians they fought to get elected, but her impatience appears to be rooted in something more than that: she seems to dislike parties and, indeed, governments, in a visceral way, almost the way that Milton Friedman does. In principle, she is a Keynesian, but she distrusts centralization, institutions, platforms, theories—anything except extremely small, local, ad-hoc, spontaneous initiatives. Basically, she really, really doesn’t like being told what to do.

So there you go: a Keynesian in principle with a distrust for “anything except small, local, ad-hoc, spontaneous initiatives.” So would this be a fair summary of Kleinism: The yearning that massive benevolent government initiatives will somehow emerge from within Temporary Autonomous Zones?

I think this passage nicely sums up Klein’s romantic, anti-intellectual, solidarity-craving rejection of the extended order of impersonal exhange:

“I’m not a utopian thinker,” Klein says. “I don’t imagine my ideal society. I don’t really like to read those books, either. I’m just much more comfortable talking about things that are.” The only time she has ever felt a whiff of utopia was in Buenos Aires, in 2002, when the political system had virtually disintegrated—during the time that she and Lewis were filming “The Take.” “That moment in Argentina was an incredible time because a vacuum opened up,” she says. “They had thrown out four Presidents in two weeks, and they had no idea what to do. Every institution was in crisis. The politicians were hiding in their homes. When they came out, housewives attacked them with brooms. And, walking around Buenos Aires at night, there were meetings on every other street corner. Every plaza where there was a streetlight, people were meeting under it and talking about what to do about the external debt, I swear to God. Groups of one hundred or five hundred people. And organizing buying groceries together because they could get cheaper prices, setting up barters because the currency was worthless. It was the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen.”

Klein has no picture of an ideal society. She doesn’t like to read books about it, either. What she knows deep down (not in that book-knowledge sort of way), what she’s really got to work from, is this: that the sight of nervous people thrown together by crisis, deliberating under streetlights about what to do next in order to make ends meet is… profoundly inspiring. Her objection to “disaster capitalism” is not so much that it is capitalism that follows the disaster, but that the engaged community of disaster eventually comes to an end.

53 thoughts on “Canada's Leading Public Intellectual”

  1. Will, I really don't say this often (although you obviously have no way to verify this), but your writing is too excellent to languish in a blog. Your style reminds me a lot of that other Will (George), although I'm sure you disagree with him on a few topics.

  2. “less a set of propositions that might be true or false than an ethnic identity or tribal commitment“

    Yet another example of . . .oh, do we even need to link to Robin Hanson anymore? Can we just keep some kind of perma-link floating around?

    As for Klein's tourist take on Argentina in crisis: I actually happen to know many Argentines. They did not find their crisis “inspiring.”

    Every single one I know has described to me the great fear they felt during that time, that they would lose everything they held dear, and that their society, with its troubled history, would completely fall apart. Argentinians felt a great desperation as their economy imploded.

    Many were afraid there could be a military coup or even a Chavez-type could arise. In general Argentinians feel closer to Europe than to other parts of Latin America; they could not believe this was happening to them, a modern state that had adopted modern policies.

    Klein should think how hard history has been to Argentina – after WWII, it was widely said to be the 4th wealthiest country in the world, with Europe decimated. In such a relatively short period of time – one many living Argentinians remember – how it seemed their country had plunged from first-world heights to depths from which no one saw how to recover. (As of 2007, Argentina's GDP ranked it 23rd in the world).

    That she should find desperate, formerly affluent people huddled for ways to stretch groceries “inspiring” shows a shocking lack of empathy.

  4. I understand that you don't like Klein's erratic political views, etc., but I don't think ad hominem attacks do much to advance your point of view. I read Klein as a journalist. She's drawing attention to what she sees as abuses of power stemming from the disparities that arise when one person or group is in crisis and another party that is safe comes to their aid. The archetype she describes is a loan shark, putting the squeeze on their hapless victim who had no one else to turn to. It's a caricature, so there should be no problem debunking the caricature she describes without the bother of getting into her persona. You can go after her upbringing, what she's getting out of being in the public eye, etc. But if the data is on your side, that's all beside the point. She has plenty of real world events that she gets her data from. Why not just debate those? She uses Friedman as a hook, and probably hasn't read his materials in depth. Take her personality out of the picture, and you still have the question that she presents: do corporations and governments intentionally take advantage of people who are in crisis? No need to look to Klein after that, just analyze the data in each specific case. Hell, throw it all into a book and call it “Clutch Capitalism: How Markets Matter Most when Disaster Strikes” or something like that. For all the anti-Klein pieces I've read, no one seems to bother to have done that yet. I don't think that's indicative of her being correct; I think it indicates that her critics really just want to dispatch her and be done with it.

  5. “Her objection to 'disaster capitalism' is not so much that it is capitalism that follows the disaster, but that the engaged community of disaster eventually comes to an end.”

    Yes, indeed. Very perceptive.

  6. I've never read Klein (maybe an article in _The Nation_ but I'm not sure) and think I'd probably find her a bit annoying. But isn't Michael Ignatieff Canada's “leading public intellectual”? (I'm not super keen in Ignatieff, either, though for different reasons.

  8. I see. Poor Igantieff. He supports torture (but only when needed, on really bad guys!) and still can't be more than the 3rd (or 2nd, depending on how we count Pinker) public intellectual from Canada, and probably won't get to lead the Liberal party, either.

  9. Wil: I've read several of your comments on Klein, and found them to be intelligent and on-point. But my real admiration is for the fact that you managed to read The Shock Doctrine all the way through without giving up or throwing up. I picked the thing up from the library and tried-really tried-to read it. The problem is that I know Friedman pretty well (his non-technical stuff, anyway) and Klein's characterization of him betrays either stupidity or dishonesty. Given her inability to understand what Friedman was saying, I didn't see any reason to keep reading. If she was that wrong about something so simple, she can't be worth listening to.
    The really unfortunate thing is that there could have been a good book there. Someone capable of thought should really write about the bad things that can happen when governments and large corporations become too entangled. In other words, a critique of neo-mercantilism would have be useful.
    Klein's illiterate drivel is not.

  10. I'm not trying to add to the fanclub-type postings, but Klein gets a disproportionate amount of exposure. Her ideas are accepted simply because when she goes onto a show like Real Time or something on Air America, the best foil they find for her is some hack conservative straw man who can do nothing other than toss rehearsed bromides at her like, “Woman, have you no respect for the free market!” … and “Do you reaaaaaaaaalllly think Iraq was so much better under Saddam?”

    Will Wilkinson Naomi Klein Cage match!!! – or at least if she goes on Maddow, give her the old Cato what for.

  12. “Her objection to “disaster capitalism” is not so much that it is capitalism that follows the disaster, but that the engaged community of disaster eventually comes to an end.”

    You goofball, her objection is pretty clearly stated – that in times of crisis elites ram through a series of reforms that would never be tolerated in normal circumstances by the population because they are in a state of shock and disorganized. I interpret her admiration of how people organize and interact during disaster not to be a longing for a perpetual state of disaster, but a longing for that same level of commitment, organization and activism during normal times.

  13. But her goofball argument is so nonsensical — that free-market reforms are never and nowhere popular, that socialist policies rammed through by elites in times of crisis are what we've all been waiting for (see her use of the current financial crisis) — one goes looking for the real idea. And that “idea” is a romance with certain kinds of intensely socially engaged processes of collective decision-making. She's Ben Barber minus the ability to actually articulate the (bad) argument.

  14. That was a great post, which perfectly describes the mindset of the many lefties that I encounter; all emotion, no principles. And yes, it's really hard to kill these types off in a short debate, since they always change the subject when cornered or the moderator will quickly jump in to cover for them when they start floundering. I'm sure that in a formal debate setting (as opposed to 5 minute gig on MSNBC) it would be an easy annihilation, but I can't see Naomi Klein accepting a formal debate offer from anyone remotely gifted.

  15. Has Klein EVER acknowledged that her shock doctrine could as easily apply to instances of government seizure and expansion of power … in her talk quoted in the piece she coyly hinted that the New Deal started as a “grass roots” movement, which is so absurd I can barely stifle the rising bile. But seriously, it is indisputable that for better or worse executive and certainly federal power was exponentially increased in the wake of the depression. Would this not be right from her recipe for disaster? Why do none of her enablers ask her this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

  16. You know, Iike Ezra Klein , I don't exactly understand the viciousness against her. Now, she's not educated about economics, she's not at all a rigorous thinker, her claims about free-market reforms are false, and you're right that her writing and speaking is more a collection of prejudices than ideas. It's a romance. But Kleinism is a romance and a prejudice that's not entirely foreign to me — intense skepticism of organized power and the “big boys,” whoever they may be. We need that. We need somebody who looks at an Obama rally and mistrusts the sight of thousands cheering; or who looks at advertising and worries about its effect on the mind; or who looks at politics and wonders who really holds influence. She “really, really, doesn't like being told what to do” — even and especially in a capitalist democratic society, we need people like that.

    I don't think she's really clear on what she's for, as opposed to against; even when she says that the economic crisis is a progressive moment, I don't think she knows what sort of regulation she wants, or is even comfortable with the much bigger regulatory apparatus that many leftish progressives want (and I don't.) She's a window-smasher, not a house-builder. Her business is disruption. But once you recognize what her function is, it's not such a bad thing — we need a few Naomi Kleins who are ready to look at every single man in a suit and ask if he's secretly a thug or crook. It's a visceral response, and often it's silly, but it's a pretty important corrective in a society that usually swings in the other direction.

  17. You know Will putting the word idea in quote marks is kind of “stupid.” See what I mean? Either it's stupid or it's an idea. But you write, “She has passions, prejudices, animosities, an appealing streak of punk nihilism, a cynical and savvy strategic sense, and no ideas.” So I guess you have typed yourself into a box and have “forced” yourself into “using” these” _”

  18. src, Here's what you need to know about the “viciousness” against her. She is shamelessly and dishonestly slandering Milton Friedman, who was truly a great man whose ideas have had an enormously positive consequences for human freedom and well-being. He is one of my intellectual and moral heroes. By dishonestly attacking Friedman, she's dishonestly attacking me and people like me. I think she knows she's being dishonest, but she finds it tactically useful to trash his reputation, and so she keeps at it. So I find her completely reprehensible, and think she needs to be exposed as the fraud that she is.

  20. Did I hit a nerve Willy Boy?

    So you are saying she has no animating principle?

    Very harsh.

    Point me to your animating principle, please.

  21. You're right, and I'm sorry. He's actually one of my intellectual and moral heroes too. For some reason, though (and I think you posted on this phenomenon earlier about a review of one of her books) like a lot of people I'm reluctant to make apples-and-oranges criticisms. It's interesting to say, “Smart commentator A is right in this case and smart commentator B is wrong.” But Milton Friedman was a scholar, you're a political philosopher, and Naomi Klein is a polemicist who doesn't always tell the truth; there's too big a gap there to invite discussion. I feel more like patting her on the head than rebutting her points. But that may be a weakness on my part.

  22. Bob, It was all going so well, until you had to go with the ultimate cliche of trolldum (“Did I hit a nerve?”). It's like when the villain goes mwahhahahahah, just to broadcast a verification that he is, in fact, the villain.
    You'll do better next time.

  23. Klein's umbrage at the idolization of Obama or Obamania as it is commonly known is less based on a skepticism of politicians per se, but more that she finds him to be a personally deceptive figure. Were he a true outsider, non-centrist (by her definition of centrist), I sense that she would welcome the jubilee, and she articulates this to some extent. I find it incredibly hypocritical of her and particularly characteristic of those on the left, that where corporations' slick ad campaigns that target youth are duplicitous and manipulative to unmitigatedly evil ends, the only vice in a political ad campaign on the level of the “Yes We Can” video was that it was ambiguous and misleading. As such, the power to persuade through propaganda is dangerous in the sphere of the market where ultimately, the commodity's worth must defend itself but benevolent as a political tool that is only different in that Obama is now the unconditional master of our lives whether we like his wares or not … but damn, those are some hip posters.

    I return over and over again to Miss Klein. I must. I know I shouldn't. I know her reasoning is faulty, that it rests on false premises, fabrications, and a general ignorance of the world. But like a dog returning to its vomit (to incorrectly paraphrase Jonathan Edwards), I must read and listen to her next egregious declaration, each one more infuriating than the last.

  24. Having never been subjected to shock treatment (or water-boarding for that matter), I can't say that it is better or worse than being tied up, gagged and forced to listen to someone read “The Shlock Doctrine” (I haven't had the pleasure) to you. It is so refreshingly familiar to witness an individual who is so against so many things while never offering a coherent example of a society that would satisfy their lofty ideals.
    I'm sure that this theoretical society would reward individuals who write books such as Ms. Klein's with international book tours. Does she fly coach or first class? Are we staying at a Holiday Inn or something better?
    You really have to feel good about Naomi standing up for – wait, what is she standing up for?
    PS. Is a transcript or video available of William F. Buckley being thrashed on the debate floor?

  25. I know. I'm always looking for those growth opportunities.

    But I'm curious, only praise allowed in the comments, and “going well” is the the goal? Jesus, what a twit!

    I'm no fanboy, or as Will would style it, “fanboy.”

  28. Perhaps he ought to do so as soon as “you” provide your legal name, full address, and some means by which to ascertain your “reputation”.

    We all know who Will Wilkinson is, what he as done, his thoughts on numerous matters, and how to contact him–even show up on his doorstep–if we would like. On the other hand, “Bob” might not even be a person and thus unworthy of time or moral consideration.

    So are you an Eliza-bot or are you not? Can “Bob” pass the modern, social Turing Test?

  30. A joke B. Kalafut, if that is your name? Sounds kinda fake to me. Maybe you real name is Tufalak. That sounds right. But I see a lot of folks posting with strange handles, so when full names and emalis addresses come into vogue here I will join right in. Tell you what, if you reply with your addey I will post mine. Same goes for any of the folks posting here. But you post is just foolish, and I really doubt that most people want their emails out in public, I get too much unwanted mail as it is. I wonder what others think of your idea.

  32. Bennett S. Kalafut
    1939 E Hedrick Drive
    Tucson AZ 85719-2420

    But you could have found that all out by yourself just by clicking the link to my 'blog. Who I am is rather obvious.

  34. Let me chime in here as a Canuck, albeit an expatriate.
    I don't know anyone serious in Canada (even on the left) who thinks
    she's a leading public intellectual. Or an intellectual at all.
    We're nutty but not that nutty.
    My vote would go to Charles Taylor, despite my reservations about his endorsement of group rights.
    And we once had a PM who was a serious intellectual, although that didn't work out too well.

  35. You don't get it, do you?

    That doesn't help me connect you to a reputation, let alone one that would justify you posting in the comments section of Wilkinson's 'blog as though you're conducting a seminar.

  37. Ms. Klein strikes me as someone who could only be the product of an orderly, wealthy, and safe society.

  38. Your assessment pretty much does amount to an ad hominem (or better: an extended genetic fallacy), and, given that you're employed at Cato and subscribe to the very philosophies under criticism in the Klein book, your comments are unsurprising. In any case, aside from your poor review (which really isn't — just a cut-and-past job from someone else's non-review, all-too-brief gloss of the Klein book), your comments about Klein left me thinking “did we read the same book”; “did I read the same New Yorker piece?”.

    First: the New Yorker article is a mainly a biographical piece, which implies certain points of criticism rather than gives us their explication — which point you make (I assume).

    But — and this is where 2 and 2 don't make 5 for me — you then say that Klein comes off as *seeming* to be a certain sort of thing (“an incoherent bundle of reflexes”). This places your post squarely in the genetic fallacy domain.

    Pardon, but when do appearances make for an argument of truth? Maybe that's just your problem: that she seems like a certain sort of thinker. Someone (like me, an anti-Sophist Sophist) could equally well say that: I think that you seem to be a kind of self-interested, egoistic Randian arch-Rationalist Ideologue, whose interest in happiness and policy no doubt implies a life filled with frustration, regret and the pursuit of ideals, like that happiness and wealth go hand in hand (your Wikipedia entry, no doubt self-composed, is a case in point). My impressions about you (and this is a basic point) don't prove the case; but they do, however, color anything that is said in their wake — a classic form of sophistry (it should be noted that even the Sophists like to talk about truth and facts, etc.; the best of us do rely on these important things). Maybe you should think less like a polemicist and more like the “thinker” you claim to be. Bloviating (perhaps silver-tongued) against those who radically diverge from your axioms (as Klein so obviously does) will only win you cronies; thus, the tenor of many of your (ego-stroking) comments found herein. (But hey, that's what Objectivism is all about, no? The Happiness of #1, the Ego. Or is that uncharitable?)

    More to the point: what does any of this post have to do with the arguments of her book? She may be a romantic (but yet she is quoted as saying that she doesn't kid herself about the realities of Communism and, as her books are meant to demonstrate *journalistically*, no illusions about Capitalism either); but she's certainly no “anti-intellectual” (what you suggest is that she's against “book-knowledge” and hence (though this is surely invalid) anti-intellectual — but of course that's off-base and not a little uncharitable: what she's against is ideologically driven theory, be it left or right. I would say — with a great many others — that your Cato is a veritable Mill of such types, but that's another story).

    Now, in all fairness: you claim (or imply) that you've written on Klein before but I've failed to find that. Can you let me on to your (hopefully cogent) work on that?

    Sincerely,

    Ideology Busters, Inc
    (Aka, Against the Sophists)

  39. “what she's against is ideologically driven theory, be it left or right.”

    just had to see that again. thats all, carry on.

  41. But of course this argument doesn't work: from the fact that X itself eventually ends, it does NOT follow that the consequences of X's having been introduced thereby also end (I throw a stone into a pond, and the stone may sink far away from view, but its ripples continue to have effects!) — which point, in the end, is exactly what Klein is trying to get us to see, but which you've failed to appreciate.

    Cronies … beware of the allure of pretty prose; it covers a lack with perfume (ancient Shang Dynasty saying).

  42. I thought it was Ayn Rand? In any case, every ideologue has their idol, and their idolatry. Speaking of which, at the heart of WW's “thinking” is this little nugget, to which Cato, Objectivists (let's call them our neo-neo-positivists) and their kin cling, and it's an unquestioned faith in empirics, to use a somewhat hoary term. Somewhere, our WW has said, “… their is only one way of knowing: the empirical way”. But then, that all depends on what is implied by the phrase “empirical way”. Deep inside the ideological cavern of WW's mind is a confusion, and a set of unquestioned axioms.

    To begin with, all data require interpretation, and in any act of interpretation, one must supply (at some point) definitions of the terms forming the basis of the interpretation. Not only that; one can ask: what is the best among the potential candidates forming the basis of my interpretation of the data — that is, one can ask, and cannot avoid asking, a question of *value*. And so we come to the next issue on which any understanding of the ” 'empirical way' ” of knowing will turn: that fact and value cannot be separated.

    With a supposedly “scientific” or empirical study of the question of happiness and meaning, though, we come to a kind of singularity in our analysis: the very fact in question is also itself a value (unlike, say, the structure of the cosmos or the structure and nature of biological change in a species over time, etc. — such things are more easily value-separable).

    But what would the Church of Empirics have us profess here, how are we supposed to treat the question of meaning and happiness according to the sacred way of empirical knowing? Simple: whatever people report or say is the case *is* the case — if I say that I'm happy, then I'm happy. Simple. And we can supply the statistics to prove it: whenever wealth increases, so too *reports* of people's happiness (and let us grant this point to the Holy Church for the moment). What would you have us do, worries the Holy Empirical Emperor, question (!) whether or not people *really are* happy, despite their proclamations that they are?

    Ah … but that's just it, isn't it? What, truly, is happiness? What people say is happiness, how they report about it on a questionnaire? (After all, says all who accept the empirical way, we've got to some how *measure* it right, and that means that we MUST — on pains of forbidding science to do its sacred job — accept the only way of measuring is, which is given in material terms, third-person reports, etc. … right?)

    Hmm … now we face a dilemma: either happiness is unmeasureable or else science needs to find a way of measurement such that what people report is the case is not necessarily, by its mere reportage, actually the case.

    If we want to adhere to some sort of empirical way (now I am going to stop being polemical), then it seems we need to find a measure — or a framework of what measurement is — that does not have built into it from the work “go” what we can call the “human measurement problem”: which is a problem of “measuring” (or quantifying) those facets of life considered values, constitutive of which is first person experience. Presently, there exists no adequate framework to even characterize, let alone to quantify, 1st person experience in such a way that said experiences are not treated as a kind of scientifically unassailable something or reduced to a fully extra-subjective something else.

    There may very well be only “one way” of knowing, which is the “empirical way”; but, as thinkers such as Michael Polanyi and Morris Berman have pointed out (let alone scores of forward-thinking philosophers of mind and cognitive science), science has hit an impasse and we must rethink our fundamental way of theorizing, and ultimately of understanding, the world, experiences and all. There *is* something wrong with quantifying meaning and happiness; but that's because there's something wrong with the framework, not with the world.

    And this, finally, brings me back to my original point: that interpretation and data, or empirics, are inseparable. At some point, you get to a stage of theoretical thinking where you face a challenge: do I fit the world into the pre-made framework, or do I change the framework to fit the world, to encompass, perhaps, a new understanding of the world that ditches old way of knowing in favor of knew ones? Indeed, we face such a challenge today; but Cato policy writes would do well to expand their knowledge base to encompass a wider range of thinkers on this very fundamental of questions, which is “what is the best way of knowing the world?” — whether or not you call is empirical. Asking the former, broader question will keep the latter one in check.

    And that's a kind of democracy.

  43. mr. wilkinson, you continually rant about naomi. So debate her publically!!! I personally know she loves debating, and loves taking free-market class warriors down. stop crying! DEBATE HER!

  48. Michael Ignatieff was really only a public intellectual when he was living in England or the U.S. He has since returned to Canada and is now the leading candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada – abandoning his intellectualism and his intellectual honesty in the process.

  49. Who the hell are “the Europeans”? I'm British, and I think Noam Chomsky is only slightly less transparently fraudulent than Naomi Klein.

  50. Chrissakes, can you not distinguish between categorical statements and implicit references to polling, distributions, statistics, and the like?

  51. Noam Chomsky is a respected computer linguist. And for good reason. His political ideas of course are less reasonable.