AmericaBlog’s Gaius Publius dissects this Chris Hedges interview:
I don’t think that living in revolutionary times is any fun; and I think that revolutions very often go disastrously wrong. So I’m not cheering this one, and I’m angry indeed that the greed-mad (I mean that clinically) barons are determined to force us to rise up. Even without the climate chaos they may force on us, the next few decades will not be peaceful.
But decide for yourself. Here’s Hedges on why he thinks we’re ripe for revolution, in the start of one already, and what we should do (source here):
Some notes:
▪ At 7:15: “What happens in moments of breakdown, is that people not only turn against an ineffectual liberal elite, that in essence has presided over political or economic paralysis, but they also jettison the values that elite purports to defend. And that’s what’s dangerous. And we’re certainly barreling towards that kind of a crisis. I worry that we’re not only weakened, but unprepared.”
▪ At 8:45, Hedges talks about what vision replaces the current one, since people need to be fighting for something, not just against something. And he makes a nice connection between the current prison population and anti-revolutionary forces and critiques in our society.
▪ At 11:00 he talks about the recipe for revolution in current society as a fusion between “declassé intellectuals” — students whose lives are burdened and broken by debt and joblessness — and service workers, “who are in essence the working poor.” Think a student debt strike would light a fire? I do.
▪ He ends by articulating a vision (in my view, viable) of where and how change will come from.
“It’s going to come off the ground, it’s going to come by stepping outside of the mainstream, it’s going to come by articulating a very different vision about how we relate to each other, how we relate to the economic system, and ultimately how we relate to the ecosystem.”
The essay they reference, “Our Invisible Revolution,” is here. A related piece, “The Revolutionaries in our Midst,”is here. I think Hedges would offer these as further evidence that, well, it’s started.
Thanks, April Cockerham.
“Class Struggle: struggle between exploited and exploiters. Demonstartes that class interests are irreconcilable. The forms of class struggle are diverse: economic, political, ideological, theoretical. But all such kinds are subordinate to the ‘political’ struggle. ” So what happens when the class struggle is won? The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat: the period of transition from socialism to communism, the suppression of classes and the passage to a classless and stateless society.” The stuff that the Christ was talking about. Or that John Lennon spoke to in “Women is the Nigger of the World” and foresaw in “Imagine.” Bob Dylan.
Or it could be as in late Imperial Rome – a financial (late capitalist) elite that has basically gone intellectually and spiritually bankrupt, leading a far-flung polydiverse mercantile empire, and mercenary-based military-industrial society into the woodlands of feudalism and decay. Bring on the Huns!
I’m glad to see such a frank discussion of the cliff toward which the 1% are herding us all. What’s needed, as one of Publius’ commenters notes, are voices of revolution to come forward. With the media’s total blackout and the 1%’s constant counterintel operations, there’s pitifully little dialogue or developed rhetoric to fan the flames of indignation (unless it’s in the service of the exploiters, that is).