The
September
2016 article was a long summary of Wages
of Rebellion by Chris Hedges because it
is an important book. The book is a
reminder of rights lost and important messages
from rebels of our era that may
have been too early forgotten. It is full of
insights into the recent social
and political challenges of the USA up to 2015.
The book lives up to its title.
It shows the wages of rebellion: the cost to the
rebels as well as to the
social benefits of us all.
That
said,
some of the ideas embedded in Hedges’ collection
of useful material don’t stand
up too well to scrutiny. Some ideas don’t stand
up because other thinking in
his material contradicts them – like his idea of
possible revolution.
The
argument
that revolution is possible in the US and could
develop at any time begins in
chapter 1 and is periodically reinforced
throughout the book. Yet Hedges subsequently
presents ideas that conflict in the chapter on
vigilantism. There, Hedges
quotes Rorty’s 1998 book Achieving
our
Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century
America. Rorty feared a
breakdown when workers realized the government
had no interest in ending low
wages, stopping exportation of jobs overseas, or
helping crippling personal
debt. Rorty says the downsized white-collar
workers will turn to the far right.
“The
non-suburban electorate will decide the system
has failed and start looking for
a strongman to vote for – someone willing to
assure them [that]… smug
bureaucrats, overpaid bond salesmen and
postmodern professors will no longer be
calling the shots. … Once such a strongman takes
office nobody can predict what
will happen. …
likely all the gains made
by black and brown Americans … and homosexuals
will be wiped out. …”
This
is
similar to what Judt concluded in 2008; see my
article on Judt and the Forgotton 20th Century,
October 2011. Judt talks about
the challenge of what he calls les exclus
(the excluded).
In his words “Such
people – whether
single parents, part-time or short-time workers,
immigrants, unskilled
adolescents, or prematurely or forcibly retired
manual workers – cannot live
decently, participate in the culture of their
local or national community, or
offer their children prospects better than their
own.” Judt says it is more
than an issue of unemployment level. These are
the losers who are vulnerable
“above all because they have lost the work
related forms of institutional
solidarity that once characterized the exploited
industrial proletariat.” I
used Judt’s thoughts again in the run up to the
“Brexit” vote in the UK; see
the article of June 2016.
Hedges
himself
notes that anything vaguely revolutionary like
the Occupy Movement
tends to stimulate vigilantes to take matters
into their own hands – at the
right end of the political spectrum.
Hence my conclusion is that a swing to a
dangerous strong person on the
right and a form of fascism is more likely than
Hedges’ revolution.
Then,
too,
Hedges berates “liberals”, thus including my own
efforts to make things a
bit better. This seems to be because liberals
are not like the rebels, they
don’t fight hard enough when rights and freedoms
are compromised. Not enough of
them are out there in the protest crowds. Judt,
too, had concerns about the
lack of fight in liberals and the
intelligentsia. But the more dismissive take
by Hedges deserves comment.
A
friend of mine said words to the effect that he
did what he could for due
process and fairness from his position and his
context. So
did I. All people who stick their neck out
against the prevailing social norms promoted by
those in power pay some price
and their role deserves some support. I don’t
want to dismiss their smaller
efforts.
Hedges’
rather
nonchalant talk about revolution also deserves
reflection. For me,
revolutions are to be avoided. There is chaos,
armed conflict and lawless
score-settling. I think of the guillotine in
revolutionary France. Revolutions
take a terrible toll on huge numbers of ordinary
people. For me, reason
dictates giving evolution every last chance. I
don’t feel that I have to be a
rebel because Hedges has explained for me the
important role they play in the
evolution of rights and fairness and a more
inclusive society.
More
than
that, I think that evolution remains more of a
possibility in several of
the important problem areas where Hedges implies
only a revolution can change
things.
Hedges’
first
chapter makes an ingenious link with an American
novel – Moby Dick. His
analogy compares the novel’s ship’s captain and
crew determined to track down
and kill the biggest whale for the money brought
by whale blubber with the US
ship of state bent on maximizing profits at all
costs in the face of global
warming and environmental risks. Those dangers
are real and Hedges shows some
of them well.
Corporations
aim
to make profits. The oil industry has used its
power to undermine, dismiss,
and even profit from the reality of global
warming and to try to belittle
concerns about a link between fossil fuels and
global warming. Yet awareness of
human-led global warming has been established –
albeit with a serious delay in
necessary actions. And concerns about oil
pipelines and fracking that are part
of the on-going oil dollar greed are concerns
that Hedges himself shows are
facing serious resistance. Obama vetoed the
Keystone XL pipeline in 2015 and in
a rare moment of support, the US Senate failed
to overturn the veto.
Hedges’
thinking
on the problems setting a stage for revolution
tends to assume the US
is the world and the US is the problem or the US
revolution the answer. The US
is without doubt a major player in the world.
But not the whole world has the
same full free market philosophy or worldview
dominated by cash alone. Europe
is struggling to make itself a place free from
internal war, for example. The
freedom of the market varies. France has a
national railway and national
carmakers – and its own problems.
The
loss of
parts of US constitutional rights to
anti-terrorist laws featured in chapter 2
is another of Hedges’ serious concerns. And that
problem has indeed spilled
over into allied countries like the UK and
Canada. Yet this kind of excess is
not without precedent in the US – I think of the
McCarthy era.
These things have been pushed back over
time
before and it does not seem impossible for them
to be revisited over time
again.
Hedges’
critique
of some super rich cannot be denied. I consider
that the good news
about the 1% is that they are only 1%. Not all
corporations and not all rich
are bad. I have written in one of these articles
about a large New England
family forestry business that decided to do
sustainable forestry and accept a
25% lower profit. There are other elements in
the corporate world to encourage
us too - like cooperatives. There are public
utilities that a society might
consider re-introducing or reinforcing.
When
it comes
to the pipelines and oil “feeding frenzy” and
colossal oil spills at sea it is
easier to come closer to Hedges and his accounts
of people protesting against
oil prospectors at the edge of their farms or
fracking near their community
water supply. Ironically, a massive global
cartel involving governments, oil,
is part of the problem here – not a global free
market. However, these concerns
about pipelines should not be left to farmers
and concerned residents along a
pipeline. Society must face the likely necessity
of just leaving some dirty oil
in the ground where it is. Necessity may also
require leaving dangerously
situated oil under the ocean where it is.
Societies must work through their
share of the consequences of needing to leave
some oil where it is.
Hedges
suggests
that a new language is important to revolution.
I think it is
important for evolution too. In September 14,
2016, the head of the IMF
congratulated Canada for boosting a slow economy
with government investments in
infrastructure. That is not the language of the
IMF I knew about in 1991.
Surely the language about a free market’s
automatically regulating itself
collapsed in 2008 and 2009 when the US
government intervened massively to bail
out banks and auto manufacturers.
Government intervention in the economy
became suddenly acceptable and
patently necessary. True, there is a residual
stench of injustice. Only some
were bailed out. Many encouraged into house
ownership woke up to enormous debt.
Houses were lost. Jobs were lost. No bailout for
them. Yet bankers went
scot-free and went back to work with minimal new
regulations or limits. There’s
more to be done here.
Some
of the
critiques of the full free market and the notion
of the cheating market that
Hedges raises have been heard. And in this area,
the US is not the only player.
The major work Capital by
French
author Piketty,
(see article Dec
2014) corrected Karl Marx on how capital
accumulates and proposed a worldwide
taxing of wealth. There has yet to be serious
movement towards this, but this
must be part of the package to enable necessary
change and avoid the right wing
strong man.
Hedges’
discussion
of the prison system points to a big problem
that must be addressed.
In other countries as well as the US,
governments can create jobs and win
supporters by building more jails and providing
more border patrols. These tend
to be in rural areas where jobs are scarce and
they tend to be good government
jobs (or jobs provided by government-funded
private sector corporations). The
workers can be unionized and so the process can
get support from the union movement.
As Hedges shows, this is very hard to undo. Yet
note this is not a problem that
rises from the global free market economy and
the greed Hedges talks of. It is
a form of socialist nationalized industry. In
theory, its job creation could be
replaced by other socialist initiatives like
enhanced Medicare or the new
Obamacare. But for particular political party
preferences, other initiatives
would work in similar ways. There could be new
projects like training for
building or testing facilities for solar and
wind power. The reborn IMF might
approve and promote these!
The
white
vigilantes are peculiar to the US, but there is
a problem of angry
disenfranchised groups, often whites, in Europe
and North America - who lack
the former support systems of the union
movement. There seems to be a need
among these groups to display some solidarity
and power in ways that add to
problems. On September 16 Radio Canada (Quebec)
told us that the Hells Angels
biker gangs are back – and that’s Hell.
Judt
captures
much of this with his thoughts on les
exclus for Europe. But there is more than
les exclus involved in biker
gangs and the drug groups that
Toronto’s former mayor Ford was able to pull
into a right wing popular
political movement. This is a wider problem than
US vigilantism. People in a
particular social space need their community and
there is no longer a place in
our society where this happens acceptably for
some classes – in Canada it is
poor or excluded whites. That former union
community and the Working Men’s
Clubs in the UK of my childhood are not here in
2016 Canada.
Another
area
of Hedges’ doom and gloom is the huge formerly
secret government gathering of
data about people without a warrant. Yet in
September 2016 there was more talk
of pardon for Snowden, and a film about him is
to appear. There can be controls
on government wiretapping and its contemporary
equivalents. I lived through
part of the time of 1970s IRA bombs in London UK
when wiretapping required
approval of a judge on a case-by-case basis.
That happened in terrorist times.
On a
positive
note, Hedges passes on Assange’s belief that
hacking and publicizing are
inevitable. So the truth will continue to come
out. The hacking is part of the
same new world of government snooping and phone
tapping. As I write, in
September 2016, medical data has been stolen and
released from the World
Anti-Doping Agency.
All
in all,
it seems still possible for the law to catch up
with the new realities and put
back some protections on our privacy and freedom
of association and peaceful
protest. Some of us also hope that international
pressure will result in the
FBI’s being warned of the costs to international
diplomacy of ignoring
international laws and other nations’ laws when
considering kidnapping people
on foreign soil.
In
summary,
Hedges gave me a great summary of the problems
and good insights into
situations. He allowed me to connect with some
of the people experiencing
problem situations. At the same time, he
underscores for me that the real
danger is from disenfranchised classes of people
who become supporters of
dangerous strong right wing political figures.
Revolution is less likely than
Hedges suggests. Revolution is not desirable. I
dare to hope that evolution is
still possible on many of these issues. Although
slower, it will hurt far fewer
people than a revolution or a right wing
neo-fascism.