My
church, Trinity St Paul’s United Church (TSP)
proposed a Lenten discussion about the Wages
of Rebellion. The participants were asked to
watch the video on YouTube entitled “Chris Hedges
on What it Takes to be a Rebel in Modern
Times.” This video had been recorded at the
Toronto office of VICE Media, linked to
Rogers, in November 2015.
I had read the paperback version of
Hedges’ book Wages of Rebellion: The Moral
Imperative of Revolt,
Vintage Canada, when the
paperback came out in March 2016 and so I
thought I should listen to the discussions. I
joined the first two of the three discussions.
I left feeling as if a conclusion was missing.
I was critical of some of Hedges’ thoughts in
2016. His book seemed to speak particularly to
a US context. In the end I decided to treat
the book as a “scripture” that should be
examined to see what it says to the current
TSP church situation. To what extent does it
apply to Canada? What does it say to Canada in
2021? And what does it say about TSP’s social
action initiatives?
Hedges does not like capitalism, but
capitalism per se is not the issue. Capitalism
is not fixed in time or place. It means
different things in places like Finland and in
China. It meant something different in post WWII
Europe than it meant at the time of US President
Regan and UK Prime Minister Thatcher. And the
understanding of capitalism has now changed.
Marx’s Das Capital has
been re-thought and the theory was refined in
2014 by Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st
Century.
Corporations per se are not the
issue either. Nor are the wealthy. Corporations
are not all the same. US corporate wealth can be
progressive or far right in its interests. Some
wealthy US citizens would pay more taxes to
reduce poverty. True, some wealthy US citizens
of the far right are behind large amounts of
“dark money” used to fund and promote right-wing
movements like the Tea Party and to promote
Republican candidates who are to their liking
throughout the US.
Even globalization is not the issue.
Yes, there were big early mistakes by the IMF in
its lending to developing countries. But there
have been some impressive successes too. The US
economic cooperation with China is linked to the
ending of the Cold War with Russia. And
significant middle classes have emerged in China
and India. It is true that economic benefits
went to some super-rich beneficiaries in most
countries. But the outcome from a global
perspective is more mixed – millions were lifted
out of poverty. That does not negate Hedges’
concern about the negative recent impact of
globalization in the United States. The
economists argue that this need not have been
so. See Stiglitz Globalization and its
Discontents Revisited, Norton, 2018.
Economic writers like Stiglitz argue
governments can offset the negatives and ensure
a sharing of the fruits of globalization among
all the people involved using rules, regulations
and things like taxation policies. It seems the
fruits of globalization were hijacked by rich
corporations and families. That is part of the
dire situation in the US that Hedges says calls
for a revolution. Sound economics, as told by
Stiglitz, finds that corporations need to be
taxed and regulated like individuals not just to
foster more equality, but also so that an
economy can function optimally. That has become
an impossible challenge in the US. Hedges is
excellent in presenting the US situation, all
the problem areas and the blocks to reform as of
2015. He also tells stories of heroes who paid a
price for rebelling to try to make change. I
find Hedges weak when he essentially tells us to
wait for a revolution.
Mercifully, the situation is not as
bad in Canada as in the US. The democracy is not
the same in Canada. We don’t have the checks and
balances in the parliamentary system that can
serve to block legislation in the US system.
Wealth polarization is a bit less in Canada. In
Canada, the health care legislation is not
perfect, but it offers close to universal free
access to doctors and to hospitals. There are
limits on election funding by corporations,
unions and individuals in most Provinces in
Canada. Canada has a distinct society in Quebec.
There are three big federal parties, not two.
And two of the federal parties are progressive
to a greater or lesser extent. There is some
public control in Canada of some of the key
things like Hydro. Quebec thrives on plentiful
hydro-electric power in counterpoint to
Alberta’s oil and gas reserves. The Aboriginal
Peoples in Canada, in the main, do not support a
lack of environmental regulation that
libertarians and polluting corporations in the
US seek. Canadian electoral boundaries, and the
conduct of elections in Canada, are largely
governed by non-partisan public entities –
unlike the US. Canada does not have big
gerrymandering of constituencies by one party or
the other. All this adds up to more hope for
change in Canada. Of
course, that Canadian hope depends on
maintaining and improving on these differences
from the US. And of course, Canada is not
perfect. See Teardown:
Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up,
by David Meslin, Penguin, 2019. Nonetheless, thanks to
Quebec and those other differences, Canada is in
better democratic shape than the US: Vive la
difference.
Hedges’ book is powerful when he is
telling us about revolutionary figures of our
times who paid a heavy price for trying to make
change. Snowdon remains self-exiled in Russia
after revealing the vast US government secret
internet surveillance. Chelsea Manning was sent
to jail by a military trial that failed to
consider the US war crimes revealed in the
documents she made available to WikiLeaks. They
remain simply ignored. Beyond
the US there have been figures who brought about
revolutionary changes in subtler ways, like
Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Gorbachev in
Russia.
Hedges’ book is critical of liberals
and others who fall short of his notion of a
revolutionary figure paying a heavy price. That
is a mistake. There are hosts of people who
don’t end up self-exiled or in jail. Many work
hard on progressive issues and all pay some
price because integrity usually costs something.
While
there have been critical game-changing figures
that it is right to hold up as models before us,
structural change depends on a larger mixed
bunch playing more modest roles towards the
emergence of a shared view of directions for
change. That was what had developed in France
before the French Revolution. All our work for
progressive change by both big and small players
is useful.
The biggest lesson I took from
Hedge’s book at the time was the danger of
right-wing revolution – a risk Hedges is aware
of but downplays. In his book Hedges quotes
Richard Rorty’s book Achieving our
Country: Leftist thought in Twentieth Century
America:
“The
non-suburban electorate will decide the system
has failed and start looking for a strongman to
vote for – someone willing to assure them … 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.
…”
The year Hedges’ paperback appeared,
the US unexpectedly swung to the right big-time
and Donald Trump was elected President. That was
Rorty’s fear. It didn’t play out as Rorty had
feared in every detail, but it went far right.
Hedges is not good at telling us how to get a
revolution that will set the wrongs right. For
me, facing and defeating the ever-growing threat
from the secret radical right in the US has to
be central. That radical right has been
empowered by the concealed organized
multimillion dollar tax free financing by
billionaires. Surprisingly it is a conservative,
David Frum, who indirectly suggests ways of
dealing with the situation in the US by dealing
with some of the results of the radical right.
See Trumpocalypse by David Frum,
HarperColins, 2020. Again, the Biden election
and aftermath so far are not following in his
every detail.
The story of radical right control
began in earnest with Obama. A major right-wing
Republican initiative was awakened by Obama’s
popularity and his relatively progressive
agenda. Obama was systematically undermined.
Large corporate donors pumped Dark Money (money
that brings tax exemption and comes from unknown
sources) into lies, misinformation and
confusion, promoting libertarian goals like free
market, no taxes and no regulations.
With tax free money billionaires had
been financing research centres on campuses
focused around followers of free market
economics or areas of law favourable to less
regulation and taxation. By the time of Obama
these centres were working to increase people’s
doubt that there was climate change resulting
from human activity. By 2010 the billionaires
had created and financed tax free fronts
promoting their libertarian principles in
society – like the Tea Party movement. From the
beginning they opposed things like a minimum
wage, regulations, and anything that spends
public funds on people in need, for example by
providing healthcare. They use marketing
techniques to advertise the benefits of all the
things Hedges (rightly) says were wrong with US
society, such as proliferating prisons packed
disproportionately with blacks. An entire US
State, North Carolina, was essentially “bought”
and turned over to a right-wing Republican state
government. Progressives – even progressive
Republicans – found they faced “righter”-wing
candidates who were funded to run against them,
and who were helped by a barrage of free
advertising funded by agencies with happy
sounding names like Americans for Prosperity,
and with only PO box addresses. See Dark
Money by Jane Mayer, Anchor, paperback
2017.
The hope Obama raised in 2008 was
lost. In November 2016 Trump tapped the
frustration that Hedges’ book reported and was
elected. A lesson to us is that in our own
voting we must always force ourselves to support
only leaders, and only candidates for election,
who exhibit integrity even if they otherwise
fall short of our best hopes. As I have argued
before, we must imagine ourselves as a manager
hiring an assistant. Forget the emotion and
colour-waving of an election moment. The stated
policy of those we vote for is less relevant
than past performance and evidence of integrity.
It would also help lessen the election hype if
it were the representatives we elect who chose
their leader from amongst their number as David
Meslin and others favour.
Where does that leave us? Like
Hedges, we can trumpet the value of those who
endure severe hardship for their work for
change. But we can also appreciate the value of
any contribution to that work. All the issues
that TSP is supporting are hopeful issues that
have traction in the wider Canadian community
right now. Just push the issues that TSP
supports with all the parties: cutting fossil
fuel consumption; promoting equal rights for
Indigenous People and for People of Colour;
pushing Black Lives Matter issues with respect
to police. Perhaps add: improve access to higher
education; promote improved treatment of mental
health issues; reduce poverty; up the minimum
wage and produce more opportunities for
meaningful work. Also, work with other
governments to track and tax wealth
internationally.
In Canada there is a need to follow
the US and undertake some good investigative
work to find perhaps “dark” financial interests
behind Canadian Conservatives’ long time – if
recently adjusted federally - strange opposition
to the reality of human-created climate change
by the burning of fossil fuels, and
against the gas tax Nobel laureate economists
recommended as a solution. We may have a Dark
Money issue in Canada.
Finally, it just seems absurd to me
that we tolerate an economy that has increased
investment income for the wealthy in a pandemic,
and ensures that large banks and companies will
not be allowed to fail in difficult financial
moments, but will not consider providing a basic
living income for the poor.