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I went to a talk by Chris Hedges last week. I took lots of notes.
I was wondering anyone would like to give an analysis, a Marxist analysis of
it.
I like some of what he said, but he calls the Liberals ' a class '. Maybe you
can also talk about Liberals, a definition of it.
Don't Liberals sort of give justification to the system. They want to try to
solve problems within the Capitalist system, reform it.
He doesn't talk in terms of the Capitalist system. Maybe its because of his
religious background. He said that he comes out of
the religious left.
Please tell me what you think of this kind of analysis :
These are my notes from a talk by Chris Hedges on May 25, on the ' Death of the
Liberal Class ' :
Chris Hedges :
The book started out as a book about the press. But my publishers, Knopf hated
it; said it was too negative. Wanted the negativity
taken out. Had a mad scramble to find someone to ublish it with the
negativity. ( Nation books )
The Press hardly exists in a vacuum. Its a pillar of traditional democracy that
has collapsed. The book was broadened to look at
liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party and why when they
functioned, they made piecemeal reform possible.
Going back to the time of WWI and Woodrow Wilson. World War I was the rock on
which the popular progressive movements broke.
On the eve of WWI there were lots of political parties like the Socialists
the Communists and various dissenting publications.
Towards the end of WWI, with the collapse of Czarist Russia the bankers got
frightened. If the British French were defeated then
the loans wouldn't be repaid. Wilson ran on a he kept us out of the war
campaign.
There was a massive campaign to change that. Walter Lippman others, the
Creel Commission and Lippman's book ' Public Opinion ' talk
about manufacturing consednt. There was talk about a system of mass propaganda.
They churned out articles.
People like Randolph Bourne Jane adams talk about how people are seduced by
war.
The intellectual class wanted to ' make the world safe for democracy '.
Harsher measures like the Sedition Act hardly had to be used at all.
Propaganda made it so that the masses were loyal to the state.
The Committee of Public Information studied mass psychology. People are moved
not by fact but by emotion.
Edward Bernays wrote his book on ' Propaganda;. ( Goebbels used it ).
People like Bourne, Adams, Eugene Debs were silenced by traditional methods,
like the Red Scares, the Palmer Raids, etc,. The rest of society was
seduced.
The Culture of Fear, Permanent War silenced the Left after the War. Radical
publications were shut down. There were mass deportations.
The day WWI ended, the people on the Creel Commission went to Madison Ave.
The Dreaded Hun was replaced by the Dreaded Red .
There was a constant search for enemies. Psychosis of fear.
Marx never anticipated the Culture of Fear. People call for their own
imprisonment.
There was the destruction of traditional values, thrift, regional ethnic
culture. Replaced by Consumer Culture. Homogenization of culture.
This marked the taking out of the dissent movements.The state shut down
radical movements.
The Liberal Class was the Middle Ground. The Safety Valve. When the pressure
was intense, it allowed piecemeal reforms. It saved Capitalism.
The New Deal saved Capitalism. Popular mobilizations. Then liberal figures,
like FDR -- Liberal Class. Thats why they were tolerated.
With the destruction of radical movements, finalized after WWII, Taft-Hartley,
dissemboweling of liberal institutions. Search for ( witchhunts) for Reds.
Poster Child of this was Sidney Hook. He went from Trotskyite to Cold Warrior.
Thousands were purged from universities.
( I.F. Stone couldn't find work so he started his own weekly newsletter in the
basement. Social workers were decimated. They traditionally worked for
/organized
for their clients. Purges were carried out in all the traditional institutions
like the press--NY Times, ACLU Careerists seize on this. Forces out people
with morals.
The destruction of radical movements. Radical movements were the true
correctives to American Democracy.
( The Civil Rights Movement never actually got power. It pressured government.)
Liberals who were tolerated were constantly warding off charges that they were
soft on Communism. This began especially in the wake of WWII.
The war ( weapons ) industry continued in the name of national security,
consuming half of GDP.
Because we were in a battle with Soviet Communism, Capitalism --Good,
Communism--Bad, Anything Capitalist is good, defeat the enemy.
By the 1970s, the country shifts from an empire of production to one of
