'Let’s Get This Class War Started'

[Popular Front of Judea]

Yes I know it's Chris Hedges. But you have to be amazed by -- and respect -- just how far out on the ledge he is now willing to go.


Class struggle defines most of human history. Marx got this right. The sooner we realize that we are locked in deadly warfare with our ruling, corporate elite, the sooner we will realize that these elites must be overthrown. The corporate oligarchs have now seized all institutional systems of power in the United States. Electoral politics, internal security, the judiciary, our universities, the arts and finance, along with nearly all forms of communication, are in corporate hands. Our democracy, with faux debates between two corporate parties, is meaningless political theater. There is no way within the system to defy the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry or war profiteers. The only route left to us, as Aristotle knew, is revolt.

Let’s Get This Class War Started | Truthdig (http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/lets_get_this_class_war_started_20131020)

[argeiphontes]

I saw that earlier and was also a little surprised, coming from the public figure he is. Then again, he's been somewhat militant IIRC.

I tend to agree with this:



In his December 29, 2008, column for Truthdig (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthdig), Hedges stated that "the inability to articulate a viable socialism has been our gravest mistake. It will ensure, if this does not soon change, a ruthless totalitarian capitalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism)."


edit: I don't think he's talking about Sweden, either, given that that is perfectly viable.

[bcbm]

great he thinks we should start the class war but is willing to sell out and perhaps report those who take it 'too far,' definitely someone i will trust in a life and death struggle with our enemies

[Popular Front of Judea]

great he thinks we should start the class war but is willing to sell out and perhaps report those who take it 'too far,' definitely someone i will trust in a life and death struggle with our enemies

Care to elaborate? I know he has had harsh words for the black bloc and is avowedly "non-violent". But "sell out" and "report"? Is there any substance to your allegations?

[synthesis]

great he thinks we should start the class war but is willing to sell out and perhaps report those who take it 'too far,' definitely someone i will trust in a life and death struggle with our enemies

I'm not disagreeing with you here, but what are you referring to, specifically?

edit: ninja'd, fml

[bcbm]

Care to elaborate? I know he has had harsh words for the black bloc and is avowedly "non-violent". But "sell out" and "report"? Is there any substance to your allegations?

does loose shit talk against sections of the movement that are more radical lead to some other place? he is happy to posit the 'black bloc' as being especially prone to pigs, ignoring their long and recent history of being more than happy to inhabit 'peaceful' groups.

if he wants to go 'far out on the ledge' then he shouldn't mind eating a bit of shit about his earlier statements. until he is willing to do that, he just seems to me like another sad liberal and i have no faith in his commitment to the movement.

he is happy to invoke mlk jr, but mlk jr never sold out the violent people in the movement, he explained them. hedges is trying to make a pretty resistance to capital, a class war without casualties. please

[Art Vandelay]

I can remember being at the anti-nato protests in chicago. It was the last day I was down there with my buddy and it was the day of the legal march, in which there was roughly 10 000 strong out on the streets. It got to the point where the march ended and it ended at public gathering where there were former U.S. soldiers throwing away their medals they had gotten in Iraq/Afghanistan, cause they came to the conclusion that the invasion was illegal. The black bloc was starting to form and although I wasn't participating in it, I dressed in black and stood with them in an show of solidarity, hoping one more person in the black mass would help to increase anonymity, despite the fact I'm not an anarchist (until things got too hectic and I was, very seriously, risking arrest, ie: people started to physically engage with the cops and pull out their water bottles filled with feces to throw on the pigs, and I really couldn't afford being arrested, being from Canada and not having enough money, except for gas to put in my truck for the 24+ hour drive back home). As this was going on, most of the liberal elements began to disperse (ie: once the state said okay we allowed you you're little legal march, now go the fuck home and don't challenge our authority). Naturally the mass of black bloc that had formed, was somewhat in the way of the liberals leaving, not cause we were trying to stop them, but because the police weren't allowing the proper space for those who wanted to disperse, to actually disperse. Some liberals organizers around us, who were trying to lead people away from the now illegal protest, began to exchange words with us (particularly me and another radical who happened to be near me). We began something of a debate (hardly though since they were fools) and the dude tried to quote kennedy on me ('those who make peaceful revolutions impossible, make violence revolutions inevitable), but he couldn't remember the end of the quote, so I finished it for him, which rightly made him feel like a dumbass (he realized that I could quote off the top of my head his political idol, despite the fact I vehemently disagreed with the sentiment; not the mention how the fuck do you forget the second half of that quote, when you've already said the first half ha). Needless to say, the friend I brought with me (who was nothing more then a liberal at the time, who was down for an adventure), was impressed by this and has since become a dedicated Marxist (I'm proud to say). As these liberal organizers were walking away, the other radical involved in the exchange with me shouted out something alone the lines of 'yeah go ahead and leave I'm pretty sure chris hedges needs a back rub.' As much as it was flippant, it was accurate. Those are the types of people who enjoy the work of Hedges, that's what his politics amount to (engagement with the state, until the state says 'okay thats enough'). So yeah, basically fuck hedges, regardless of whatever rhetoric he espouses.

[synthesis]

does loose shit talk against sections of the movement that are more radical lead to some other place? he is happy to posit the 'black bloc' as being especially prone to pigs, ignoring their long and recent history of being more than happy to inhabit 'peaceful' groups.

if he wants to go 'far out on the ledge' then he shouldn't mind eating a bit of shit about his earlier statements. until he is willing to do that, he just seems to me like another sad liberal and i have no faith in his commitment to the movement.

he is happy to invoke mlk jr, but mlk jr never sold out the violent people in the movement, he explained them. hedges is trying to make a pretty resistance to capital, a class war without casualties. please

I guess I see the article in the OP as being significant more in the sense of a prominent left-liberal becoming relatively radicalized - which makes me hopeful that this reflects an imminent zeitgeist - as opposed to the sense of gaining a prominent new soldier for "the cause."

[bcbm]

I guess I see the article in the OP as being significant more in the sense of a prominent left-liberal becoming relatively radicalized - which makes me hopeful that this reflects an imminent zeitgeist - as opposed to the sense of gaining a prominent new soldier for "the cause."

i don't give a shit about 'soldiers for the cause.' i do care about shit-talking cowards being lionized for (finally) giving service to the real issues that those they have been happy to shit on have been talking about for ages.

great, some liberal realized we have classes and a class war and the rich are fucking us over. i'm happy for him. will he now extend some respect to those of us who have been saying that and, ahem, fighting for it and getting shit from him?

thought, to be honest, i don't really care because hedges' opinion matters as much as mine in the grand scheme and his antics are just more handwringing. fuck him. the war is on with or without him. or rather, his opinion has no effect on the war.

[Art Vandelay]

i don't give a shit about 'soldiers for the cause.' i do care about shit-talking cowards being lionized for (finally) giving service to the real issues that those they have been happy to shit on have been talking about for ages.

great, some liberal realized we have classes and a class war and the rich are fucking us over. i'm happy for him. will he now extend some respect to those of us who have been saying that and, ahem, fighting for it and getting shit from him?

thought, to be honest, i don't really care because hedges' opinion matters as much as mine in the grand scheme and his antics are just more handwringing. fuck him. the war is on with or without him. or rather, his opinion has no effect on the war.

Not only that, but the amount of damage he has done to the class struggle, by being a relatively 'class conscious' (trust me I use that term lightly since there are some here who think he's savable as a public figure), is far greater then he could ever do, given a change of heart, in regards to his awful politics and the nonsense he's spewed.

[synthesis]

i don't give a shit about 'soldiers for the cause.' i do care about shit-talking cowards being lionized for (finally) giving service to the real issues that those they have been happy to shit on have been talking about for ages.

great, some liberal realized we have classes and a class war and the rich are fucking us over. i'm happy for him. will he now extend some respect to those of us who have been saying that and, ahem, fighting for it and getting shit from him?

thought, to be honest, i don't really care because hedges' opinion matters as much as mine in the grand scheme and his antics are just more handwringing. fuck him. the war is on with or without him. or rather, his opinion has no effect on the war.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not concerned at all with what he says or does as an individual aside from this article, much less with anyone who decides to become this petit-bourgeois author's fanboy based off this article. It's the simple fact that his politics have shifted that is a pattern I'm hoping will reproduce among the broader left-leaning population, but not because of him or his writing - rather, because of the same factors that have led him to shift his political positions.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Theoretically I agree with the criticisms leveled at the views of Hedges regarding violent protest but it's not exactly like his views on those issues are exactly outside of the political mainstream. For that matter most of the working class folks I know take his kind of "peace police" politics for granted. I think that viewpoint is held not so much because of a moral failure on an individual level but because of certain social and historical conditions. Some of those conditions are the reinforcement of liberal democracy in the years at the end of and right after the Cold War, the emergence of a number of pacifistic political ideologies, and the short term victories of a number of less-violent popular social movements among them.

I think things are slowly starting to change in that arena, especially with the Iraq war, the 2008 crisis and the Arab Spring (and subsequent protests) but it will take time. With that in mind the views of people like Hedges regarding the black block etc might be wrong, but it's certainly understandable in this political climate.

[blake 3:17]

Hedges is dope.

[Ele'ill]

Hedges is dope.

yes exactly have you ever been on dope that's what his positions on things are like

[ckaihatsu]

In his December 29, 2008, column for Truthdig, Hedges stated that "the inability to articulate a viable socialism has been our gravest mistake. It will ensure, if this does not soon change, a ruthless totalitarian capitalism."


Hey, no worries -- I got this one....





[I] have developed a model that addresses all of these concerns in an even-handed way, and uses a system of *circulating* labor credits that are *not* exchangeable for material items of any kind. In accordance with communism being synonymous with 'free-access', all material implements, resources, and products would be freely available and *not* quantifiable according to any abstract valuations. The labor credits would represent past labor hours completed, multiplied by the difficulty or hazard of the work role performed. The difficulty/hazard multiplier would be determined by a mass survey of all work roles, compiled into an index.

In this way all concerns for labor, large and small, could be reduced to the ready transfer of labor-hour credits. The fulfillment of work roles would bring labor credits into the liberated-laborer's possession, and would empower them with a labor-organizing and labor-utilizing ability directly proportionate to the labor credits from past work completed.




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://s6.postimage.org/nwiupxn8t/2526684770046342459_Rh_JMHF_fs.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/nwiupxn8t/)

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

What does he mean "get it started"? The struggle between proletarian and bourgeoisie has been started since the day that there were capitalists. Class-struggle is always here. The seeming social-peace only means that the bourgeoisie is at this point in time on the winning side of the war.