The Problem With Chris Hedges

Yes, he writes passionately against the bad guys. The problem is he presents no vision of what should replace them and their class inequality society.

I invite you to read Chris Hedges’s new Substack post here, titled, “Trump’s Greatest Ally is The Democratic Party: The Democratic Party and its liberal allies refuse to call for mass mobilization and strikes — the only tools that can thwart Trump’s emergent authoritarianism — fearing they too will be swept aside.”

Here’s my egalitarian take on Hedges’s article.

Hedges very rightly condemns the entire ruling class, including the Democratic Party. Good for him!

The problem is that Hedges offers no vision of what can/should replace the capitalist status quo ruled over by this ruling class.

Thus Hedges concludes his article with this paragraph:

Our captured institutions, subservient to the rich and the powerful, are capitulating to Trump’s authoritarianism. All we have left is sustained non-violent, disruptive civil disobedience. Mass movements. Radical politics. Rebellion. A socialist vision that counters the poison of unfettered capitalism. This alone can thwart Trump’s police state and rid us of the feckless liberal class that sustains it.

This is not a vision of what we are FOR, what we want our society to be. It is merely a call for protesting against our rulers. Furthermore, Hedges’s reference to the “poison of unfettered capitalism” implies that capitalism would be fine if only it were not unfettered. Presumably what Hedges means by “a socialist vision” is merely something that would fetter capitalism. Because Hedges never discusses—not even a little bit—what he means by the “socialist vision,” he renders that phrase meaningless. Worse, he thereby enables the ruling class to impose its will on us and call it “socialism,” as happens in Europe all the time.¹

He certainly never says that the “socialist vision” means abolishing capitalism i.e., having no rich and no poor, no class inequality.

He never says it means creating an economy without wage labor based on “from each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.”

He never says it means having genuine democracy based on local sovereign assemblies of only egalitarians.

Chris Hedges seems to want merely to fetter the rich but leave them in power in a capitalist society based on money and buying and selling in which the people with lots of money are the ones with lots of power.

The egalitarian vision of abolishing class inequality (summarized again here) is wildly popular with ordinary people no matter for whom they voted. There is thus no excuse for somebody to avoid expressing this vision clearly and explicitly since this is the vision that can inspire huge numbers of people to join and build the kind of massive revolutionary movement that can in fact remove the rich from power. Why doesn’t Chris Hedges express this vision?

What about Hedges’s call for big labor strikes?

Hedges writes:

We must carry out strikes to cripple and thwart the abuses carried out by the emerging police state.

Again, this is pure reformism that, even if successful, leaves the rich in power with their capitalist society.

For egalitarian revolutionaries (i.e., for the have-nots of the world who want to end class inequality and thereby stop the rich from treating us like dirt and committing mass murder) the purpose of militant labor strikes is a) to win good reform demands; AND b) to proclaim the egalitarian revolutionary aim of the striking workers; AND c) to demonstrate the high level of determination to remove the rich from power, which determination is required to persuade members of the military forces to refuse orders to attack the egalitarian revolutionary movement and to go over to its side with their weapons as I discuss here.

Beware of Chris Hedges!

For all of Chris Hedges’s passion and righteous rhetoric, he is not advocating what the vast majority of people want: to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.

As I have written here and linked to above, if we don’t provide an inspiring vision of what we are FOR, and only talk about what we are against, then we will never build the kind of massive revolutionary movement that it takes to remove the rich from power. We will remain on the treadmill of defeat, ruled by the rich forever.

For this reason I say, “Beware of Chris Hedges!” Hedges is not providing the kind of leadership that the have-nots need. The have-nots need for people to explicitly aim for abolishing class inequality and to discuss what exactly that means, that it means shaping all of society by the egalitarian values and principles summarized here (and linked to above.)

It is long past the time when we should stop viewing so-called leaders who refuse to explicitly advocate what most people want as legitimate leaders.

Some people defend such so-called leaders by saying that they’re good leaders because they advocate a good “first step.” This “first step-ism” is poison! The first step towards achieving a goal—any goal—is to state explicitly what the goal is. This is especially so when the goal is one that the powerful rulers of society fight tooth and nail to prevent. Do you think that somebody who wanted to build a house would ever achieve that goal if they never first said explicitly “I intend to build a house”? The actual first step towards removing the rich from power and abolishing class inequality is to declare explicitly that the goal is to remove the rich from power and abolish class inequality. It’s not complicated.

The kindest explanation I can offer for why so-called leaders such as Chris Hedges and Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein and Zohran Mamdani, etc. never call for removing the rich from power to abolish class inequality is that they fear that if they did so they would “scare people away.” This is a fear based on elitism, not based on actually talking to and listening to ordinary people, as I have done and report on here. It is elitist to think, “I myself would love to remove the rich from power to abolish class inequality, but alas most people are not as enlightened as I am and do not support this radical goal.”

A less kind explanation is that these so-called leaders don’t call for removing the rich from power and abolishing class inequality because they fear that if they did so they would lose their support from the rich: lose their funding to pay the rent and office staff of their organization?, lose permission to have a big online platform?, lose having big publishers distribute their books?, lose having decent mass media coverage? lose being allowed to live instead of being assassinated like MLK, Jr. and Malcolm X and Fred Hampton? Who knows what? This is why we cannot expect to have a big leader.

The socialist president of France banned demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians. And the French socialists in parliament voted for a bill that would let the government tap phones and emails without even having to get any judicial permission. People in France are outraged, and opponents of the bill “launched a last ditch campaign against it under the banner: ‘24 hours before 1984.’” In July of 2016 the working class rose up against anti-worker reforms to French labor law demanded by the socialist government.

1. The socialist prime minister of Greece in 2009 (Georgios Papandreou, who was the president of the Socialist International since January 2006) insisted banks must be repaid their debts and he therefore promoted austerity measures to do this, thus (understandably!) infuriating the Greek population and causing three quarters of it to demand his resignation.

The gaggle of political parties associated with the word “socialist” include, for example the Greek party, named Syriza, which was “originally founded in 2004 as a coalition of left-wing and radical left parties.” Syriza gained enormous support by 2015 because it promised to oppose the draconian austerity that the European banks were insisting the Greek people had to endure. Syriza became the largest party in the Greek parliament and its leader became--and remains as of May 22, 2016--the prime minister.

Then what? The May 22, 2016 Guardian newspaper reports, under the headline, “Greece pushes fresh austerity drive through parliament,” that:

The Greek parliament has approved a fresh round of austerity incorporating €1.8bn in tax increases – and widely regarded as the most punitive yet – amid hopes the move will lead to much-needed debt relief when eurozone finance ministers meet next week.​

Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, mustered the support of 152 of his 153 deputies on Sunday to vote through policies that many have previously rejected.

Addressing the 300-seat house during the heated three-day debate that preceded the ballot, Giorgos Dimaras, an MP in Tsipras’ leftwing party, said he was appalled at being forced to support measures he had spent a lifetime opposing.​

“I am in mourning,” he said. “This is what can only be called wretchedness.”​

A more recent (July 8, 2019) report shows how utterly awful the Tsipras “socialism” became:​

“But nothing was predestined about the eviction of struggling families and the foreclosure of their homes. Nothing was predestined about the auction of vast tracts of land and sea to fossil fuel corporations such as ExxonMobil. Nothing was predestined about the severe overcrowding, sexual violence, and shortages of “doctors, medicine, food and drinking water” in Greece’s migrant camps. And nothing was predestined about the sale of arms to Mohammed bin Salman, the smiles of support for Benjamin Netanyahu and the purchase of fighter jets from Donald Trump.

In short, Tspiras did not simply capitulate to the troika, or swap his radical ideals for hard-nosed realism. He actively refashioned his government as a rightwing force on the world stage.”​

Socialist parties don’t call for removing the rich from power and having no rich and no poor. This is what most people really want. And this is the only way to prevent the rich from continuing to have the real power in society. It is the only way to get off the treadmill of defeat in which people are forever forced to fight the rich for every single crumb we are able to get.

Socialist parties, when they control the government, boss people around in the name of the working class, and people don’t like it.

Whatever benefits people have in nations ruled by socialist parties is obtained IN SPITE of the fact that a socialist party is in power, not because of it; these benefits are obtained by people fighting for them and often they have to fight the socialist parties to do so.