The Socialist and the sword Book

I looked up Noreena Hertz based entirely on the bloggers at Racialicious.com referring to her as an "punk economist" whose sharp crititiques of capitalism and proposals for collective and cooperative alternatives was actually making fairly mainstream waves. Cool right? I'm desperately searching for some non-Marxian anti-capitalist economists to look up to as I try to figure out this econ grad student thing. Hertz sounded gold.

But she's a terrible writer (and a Keynesian to boot)! The Silent Takeover is more a list of statistics than any kind of thesis. Strings of loosely related factoids fill each chapter and made reading this book all the way through almost unbearable. Unfortunately, the structure of Hertz's book really does not allow for you to stop reading it early if you want to get to the point. Her subject matter (I'll get to that in a second) is complex, but instead of complicating her treatment of it, she simply writes contradictory chapters side by side, opening the second chapter with a snide 'or so you thought!' as if she was really pulling one on her reader. But all she was doing was filling her reader with confusion-- what on earth is she trying to say?? A good piece of academic writing hammers the thesis in. Every sub-chapter and sub-point is used to clearly support or nuance the thesis. Hertz is an academic who tried to write a popular book by throwing out all she's learned about strong writing. It really did not work.

However! I'm gonna go ahead and give Hertz some respect. Published in 2001, the book opens with Hertz describing her experiences as a protester at the Genoa G8 summit. That's rad, I might be giving that second star here just for being an economist who actually puts her feet where her journal articles are. Her main point, at least stated in the intro and conclusion, is to explore the rise of protest amidst the fall of voting. She is writing about "the silent takeover" of government by multinational corporations. According to Hertz, masses of people around the world are responding to the increasing irrelevance of their governments by attacking the problems head on, through consumer activism, major mobilizations like the G8, and building grassroots institutions (okok, I added that last one, Hertz doesn't really talk about it). "Protest," she says, "is fast becoming the only way of affecting the policies and controlling the excesses of corporate activity."

The main part of the book explores, in her disorganized style, how governments are corrupted by corporate money and pressure, how powerful countries and corporations run multinational financial institutions like the WTO and IMF at the expense of poor countries and people, and ways corporations have provided or gutted social services as profit dictates. The entire book sums up the lack of accountability throughout the global economic power structure. This includes summit demonstrators: "Protest acts as a countervailing force to the Silent Takeover, yet because it is not fully inclusive it shares, to a degree, the illegitimacy of its opponent." Hertz leaves the reader with no deeper understanding of participatory democracy or what her brand of good governance could look like than that haunting hopelessness.

So I was mad at Naomi Klein for writing the book I wish I could have grown up to write. Now I'm mad at Noreena Hertz for messing up such a good chance at the same. I'll probably check out some more of her work to see if it's gotten better over the past decade.