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Chris Hedges: America faces a historic choice — "ugly corporate tyranny"
or revolution | Salon.com
https://www.salon.com/2020/07/16/chris-hedges-america-faces-a-historic-choice--ugly-corporate-tyranny-or-revolution/
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If I were writing it, I wouldn't change much in this compelling analysis
by Chris Hedges, except that I would place greater emphasis on class as
a determinant, and even more emphasis on ruling class power as a barrier
well-designed to inhibit forward movement.
To recapitulate what I and many others on these lists see:
We are in a country that still very much dominates the globe, ever since
WW2, with the primacy of the dollar as the world medium at which prices
are set, the world's most powerful market, reputation among the poor and
the darker-skinned around the globe as most desirable place to be -
simultaneously driven by need, deprivation, hate and fear; the most
powerful military, economic, political and cultural regime in history, a
buffering middle class that benefits from that power with the most
secure and relatively comfortable living conditions (matched and
buttressed in more "developed" allied countries) in the history of the
species, which protects the powerful from the full force of revolt among
those most adversely affected.
The power, ever increasing, of the primary driver of capital
accumulation, the competitive, piratical, no-holds-barred compulsion to
extract profit at least cost from new investment increments of surplus
to maximize market share, and the need to shape and condition the world
socioeconomic system to comport with that imperative.
As is now becoming generally recognized on the left, It seems that
whatever change for the better there will be will only come in this
world when it is an active prospect here in the United States, the
"belly," since without America on board, the dominant factor in
production, exchange and distribution, change faces overwhelming odds.
Also we have, so far, no history on this continent of invasion, or
generally acknowledged threat of physical destruction from other parts
of the world. No chastening background. Nor have we yet any meaningful,
generalized history of overt class consciousness in this regime of
"equal opportunity," as much as that may appear to be coming undone or
at least questioned.
It's this privileged position and rulers' power that gives me qualms
about Hedge's assertion that "hope for change lies in the streets" of
the United States. Expected feints yes, given the extent of continuing
protest, toward change in the reactions of the powerful, like the
current toleration of "Black Lives Matter" painting of dominant streets,
the removal or renaming of offensive racist icons, corporate assent in
many quarters to police reform, and the political donning of
kente-cloth; but only to divert protest long enough to better facilitate
means of repression.
Hedges does acknowledge the overwhelming police and ultimately
military-carceral power to repress that movement, but that will gain
force only once the domestic media are silenced by common boardroom
assent, just as they have been since Vietnam in showcasing American
savaging of others on the planet.
I'd say change of whatever extent will soon have to go underground and
largely off the streets, over a long, painful period, not depend on
exchange through the surveillance-capable and confined electronic media
controlled by capital in that process, and be closely organized around a
developing, viable vision of change, in order to overcome or mitigate
the increasingly unequal, intractable socioeconomic and irreversible
environmental catastrophe we see happening before our eyes.
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