Jack—If anyone doubts tha neo-liberals can behave like neo-conservatibves—try going to most “progressive” blogs. Post a somewhat negative analysis of one of Obama’s policies.(This one, so far, excepted!)

Try to log in the next day.

Get back to me about what happens.

Lets play a word game.

Marxism, Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

Bourgeoisie, prior to the French Revolution of 1789, generally meant “middle” class. The “middle” class acquired control by beheading the “ruling” class and became the same tyrants they’d replaced, leading to a new definiton of bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie became the “exploiter” class most characteristic of the “capitalist” system.

The French Revolution made the bourgeoisie the “highest” class. People who were rich but without the highest social standing, who tore down the privileges of the old “upper” class.

But that’s a good thing right? One would think so, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. 

The bourgeoisie [or former middle class] developed principles of rule that sanctified money above birthright or family ties. [Hence the expression, they eat their own] The old “middle” class became the new “upper” class, where simply having the right name no longer guaranteed power.

So, the term “bourgeoisie” now commonly refers to the “capitalist” class. That class of people who own so much, they don’t need to work to make a living. Included in the class are people with very powerful positions in production [as in corporate control or diversefied holding companies and investment banks] or government generally.

Oh my goodness, who do we know that fits that description?

Proletariat means, the “working” class [or blue collar] people in society. Not the middle class, formerly known as the bourgeoisie, but the working class, formerly and still known as the proletariat. So we have the former middle class becoming the “upper” class, and the “working” class remaining the “working” class.

What happened to the middle class?

Good question. They are the gutty fringe who believe they can move into the “upper” class if they just follow a few rules. Gamble on their own success, with their own money. Save, work hard and someday maybe, be rich. Actually that works for a few. But even fewer have the money and the self-discipline and the determination to fight an ever steeper uphill battle. so, one by one, they fall into the trap of believing capitilism is next to godli-ism. And a synonym for Democracy and freedom.

Ergo, middle class profit enriches capitalism through stocks and dividends and one by one, like dominos on a play table, the successfull middle class entrepreneurs fall.

So in actuality, the so-called middle class is pretty much an illusion.

What’s it got to do with Marxism? Well Marx actually was a visionary, who believed passionately in doing away with class structure, and giving equality to all of society, hence socialism.

FDR’s version of socialism, when capitalism brought the workers to their knees decades ago, saved the nation. Yet we’ve allowed the “exploiter” class to once again turn it into a dirty word. Today we listen to repub leaders encourage a class system and denigrate those who call for class equality. And strangely their followers [most of them in the lower class] cheer this obvious descrimination!

By the way, Reagan had his own version of socialism. It was called unearned income tax credit.

The Communist Manifesto was a document calling for elevating the value of the working class, eliminating “capitalist” control by the upper class, and creating honest equality. The down-side was they believed it had to happen by force.

While I do not advocate force, or support the idea of a stateless society, and the abolition of private property. [Would that I could be like our brother TAO Walker] That’s only because we humans are still so imperfect, to try and do so would only propel evil people into absolute power.

Oh! That’s exactly what happened!

The Communism taught by Marx and embraced by Lenin bares little resemblance to the communism we’ve been taught to hate and fear. In fact the Communist Bolsheviks that eliminated the ruling class in Russia murdered Lenin, less his radical notions of equality undo their power grab.

If people would study instead of react, they might come to realize our current “capitalist” society comes closer to resembling the evil version of Communist Bolshevism and/or Fascism of the twentieth century than the communism put forth by Karl Marx.

But our bourgeoisie, or “upper” class has done such a good job of brainwashing us over the past century, we now find ourselves being victim proletariat, or “worker” class. Close to ruin by the greedy “capitalist” class. And the middle class seems to be disappearing altogether!

The Diva and McMaverick, [who looks more like a lost calf every day] as well as their supporters, cant understand any of this, because they cant remember history and wouldn’t understand it if they could. Except those repubs who have risen to the top of the capitalist milk jug. They understand it very well, and count heavily on all those voters who don’t!

A note to “end-timers” everywhere. If Christ takes you up into his perfect world, it will be alarmingly similar to the perfect society Marx envisioned. You might want to re-think your wish for that rapture.

Gee Chris,could you be more absolute, and simultaneously, vague?
Your essay makes me squirm and,
at the same time, does Not inspire me…

To…..TAO Walker, October 27 at 3:25 pm:

Must say….I really appreciate your sentiments….
a bit more stridently phrased than is ‘comfortable’ for me..
(I embrace karma And reincarnation And the Golden Rule)..........however…..
as I said….I do appreciate (greatly) your shoutout…to which I add for a good starting line wherever one finds oneself:

As we think, so we become….................
(sooner….....or, later….’-)

Strive On..

Paracelsus

It is still sad that, to this day, many americans still don’t realize that the fruits of our modern day illegal alien problem were sown by our government and big businesses slash and burn foreign policy in Central and South america for the last 50 years. We made it so unbearable for the working classes and poor in those nations that they had no other choice but to escape to the sanctuary of the US. And now we are stuck with them while they help drag down wages, and subsequently our economy. Every once in a while a nation gets what it deserves.

magicwanz

I have been saying for months now that the grand repug plan is to throw this election, full well knowing that it will take a minor political and economic miracle to keep from running this nation into the ground in the next four years. They figure that we will forget how this all happened, and blame the party in power (the dimmos) and the repugs will rise from the ashes like some nazi phoenix with even more power than before. Don’t laugh, it happened in 1980, and 1968.

As for the rest of the comments, don’t be surprised that a post Obama america will prove to be more polarized than at any time in post Civil War era.
Yessiree, the shit is going to hit the fan and spray on eveybody! I recommend alot of cotton and polyester(it’s easy to pre-soak those stains) and of course, canned food and shotguns!(and beer, lots and lots of beer)

Are there any people easily identifiable as progressives amoung Obama’s advisors and campaign staff?

Are there any black people on Obama’s campaign staff?

One thing Chris Hedges is dead-on about is the absence anywhere inside the “dominant” contraption of a LANGUAGE adequate to address the dire seriousness of the “situation” he and many others increasingly bemoan.  So he and most everyone here go on trying to get a “handle” on it using the same old fractured and impoverished lexicon that has proved to be so effective in driving them into the mess in the first place.

This old Indian once had a conversation with a “sucessful individual” who, like Hedges and others here, could see plainly enough that “the center” had already failed, and one way or another there was going to be hell to pay.  Of the two of us, she was the only one unaware of the semantic trap she was in….a trap matching at every critical point the shape and dimensions of its “real world” counterpart.

Wanting sincerely to suggest to her a possible way out, this old Savage described the place of Humans in the Living Arrangement of Our Mother Earth, including the natural organic Human FORM the Lakotah call “TiyoshPaye,” and the organic Human FUNCTION as a “component” of Her immune system, that naturally determines our form.

This decent-enough domesticated Sister listened for a bit, then broke-in to announce, with no little self-satisfaction, “Well that’s all well-and-good for you Indians, but we civilized people simply DO NOT SPEAK ‘organic function,’ (making quote marks in the air).”  It seemed not worth the bother suggesting that she’d just diagnosed exactly the “disease” that was, and is, systematically killing her and all her “kind.”

The Medicine necessary to its relief remains the same, too.  So this old Man will recommend it here again.  Learn the language of ORGANIC FUNCTION, and apply it rigorously to every aspect of your diminishing half-lives every moment of every day in every place and circumstance.  Get over your silly obsessions with “who” you are (At this late date everybody here is “somebody.”), and what you think you “want.”  Remember, rather, WHAT you are as a Human Being, and devote yourselves to restoring to this Living Arrangement the vital Human response to conditions here that has been intentionally suppresed by your tormentors.

This is not a “test,” Sisters and Brothers.  This is the actual EMERGENCY!!!!

HokaHey!

I was predicting this a decade ago.  They want to turn the clock back to 1929, and to go the fascist route, not the New Deal route.  The elites saw no counterforce to the superempire, and so no third world war was likely to stop their vision of global conquest.
Bryzezinski was calling for a more “autocratic” elite to “mobilize” the masses in pursuit of imperial aims.  The Project for a New American Century was doing the same.  American Enterprise Instiute, the Israelis—everyone in power was salivating at shoving their uranium munitions down the throats of an ill equipped third world.

All they needed were the proper domestic conditions.  The 9/11 debacle and high treason provided the “shock and awe” they wanted.  The constant racist “clash of civilizations” across the propaganda spectrum has been molding the minds of the ill informed ever since.

The economic collapse has been seething in the background for years, predicted, expected, engineered.  They feel they are in position to restructure the society radically as a result of this other preordained “crisis.”

I’m not certain that “the old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets” are actually “dead,” as Chris suggests.  They may be severely tested in the not too distant future in the U.S. and other parts of the world, but we have not reached that point yet.  When the former “middle classes” find themselves jobless and homeless, and the former “wealthy” citizens of this relatively short-lived nation-state begin driving to the market with their back seats full of U.S. currency, I suspect it will be too late to consider the kinds of nonviolent solutions to domestic troubles Nader promotes.  The comments written by Jack may actually be closer to the point, with a few major qualifications: Right/Left ideologies may not describe the opposed factions in this (probable?  possible?) future discussed by Chris and others.

If we do find ourselves in some kind of massive economic crisis in the near future, Up/Down may be closer to the point.  That is, Right/Left factions may not be discernible in terms of how insider intellectuals and others normally use these terms today.  Right/Further Right/Still Further Right may actually better describe the factions which rise out of these (supposed) ruins.  My “if” in the first sentence of this paragraph, however, is a pretty major qualification in itself.  I suspect it is actually too soon to choose parties/factions at this point.  We will be in entirely unchartered territory if an economic cataclysm takes place in this country.  I’m not a fortune-teller (there are too many unanticipated consequences involved in trying to predict the future, as Karl Popper and others have made all too clear), so I’ll bide my time until an actual choice between factions presents itself, if one ever does, that is.

Amen! With Democratic dominion of Congress comes an excellent chance of collosal failure. History will swing back hard to the right, probably destroying the last vestiges of our Democracy. Government will go the way of the Republican party. I consider the Republican party’s current state, with rational folks abandoning the party to racists and fundamentalist Christians, to be a model for our nation’s probable future history. Don’t underestimate the ability of “moderate” Democrats in Congress to fail to rise to the occasion. To them, this not a great and rare opportunity to take back our nation from the right-wing hi-jackers. This is the time to give away more of their power to the executive branch, close their eyes in fear and snuggle in closer to the corporate teat.

I see the pictures of Klansmen marching, and I see criticism of Baldwin in the article, but I haven’t seen any news about Baldwin being a Klansman. Also I see it as unfair that people who insist that entrants into the borders of this country should follow the law should be implicated as racist. We have citizens of various ethnic backgrounds who are denied fair employment because of the use of illegal aliens as scab labor. I am pro-choice, so I don’t agree with every stance of Mr. Baldwin, but this need to paint everyone with the same politically correct brush is wrong.

What we are going to see in the future I think is what some of the founding fathers hoped for, that is a federation of strong states and a weak central government.  We will see many diversified economies and state governments.  The religious right will have their states to control and progressives will have theirs.  This country is too large and diviersified to expect any meaningful unity.  Obama is all wrong in his thinking here.  The country is not one big happy family.  He wishes it was because of his own personal misfortune regarding family in his youth.  We keep electing presidents with some kind of disfunction and they keep projecting it upon the nation.

“First they call you a fool; then they say you are dead wrong; then they say it’s possible your are right; then they say they knew it all along.”
Ghandi

Last I heard, Nader was polling at 2.5%, Baldwin at about 1%, so it appears progressive populists are ahead (also:  McKinney about 1%, Barr about 1.5%).  Not that this is cause for complacency - the totals are 3.5 vs. 2.5, not a huge difference.  The problem, once again, is that most progressives just can’t give up the Democratic Party, no matter how often or badly they’re betrayed.

I’m not sure why Hedges ignores the Green Party:  it’s the only national progressive populist organization.  (Being in Oregon, I also don’t know why the Progressive Party in Vermont hasn’t joined us.)  Nader is presently more prominent, having name recognition and a cadre of loyalists; but at 74, he’s unlikely to run again.  The return of his loyalists to the Greens, even if it means a takeover, would help unify the Left for the contest Hedges foresees.

I do think there will be a battle for the soul of America.  I just hope it’s political, not violent; for one thing, the Right has us hugely outgunned.  One effect of privatization has been to build up private armies like Blackwater, a key element of Fascism.

The Democrats proved with the Bailout (if further proof was needed) that they have abandoned progressive populism and the New Deal.  It’s conceivable that an economic crisis will force them back to progressive ideas, but so far, they are clearly the kind of honest politicians who stay bought. 

So without a national party that represents the Left, the religious right would indeed have a free hand when things get nasty.  Over the next few years, it will be crystal clear what the Dems’ real agenda is.  They will stand naked, with no Republican fig leaf, because they will completely control the federal gov’t.  I think those will be very good years for the Greens. 

We have to have a national party that represents us.  At present, there is only one:  the Greens.  This is a call to unity.  We must stand together, or fall together.

You have to admit, despite raising many honorable civic points over the years, Ralph Nader has become the Harold Stassen of the political left. But unlike the 25th Governor of Minnesota, Ralph has never held political office, yet he feels it is his most righteous duty to throw his political hat into the presidential ring. My late father use to say it wasn’t a presidential election until former Governor Stassen announced his intention to seek the highest office in the land. Perhaps the same can be said about Mr. Nader.

And, oh yes, this is part of what I have meant when I have commented that these ultra right wingers will not give up power without a fight.

Well, friends and neighbors, it was ok until the neocons formed their think tanks and started ploting the down fall of the U.S.A. or should it really be called a take over. Never a bunch of hatred minded people anywhere, even makes far far right fundamentalist muslim radicals appear down right friendly.
It is hard to imagine a group of people hating others so much that they have determined that those people NOT on their side are NOT to exist in ‘their’ america. And you know what that is, don’t you? It is declaration of war. I don’t know how they will carry this through but I dread to think that they will actually have the law and the military on their side and it will most likely make the inquisitions of the dark ages seem like a picnic.
I also hope obama, if he is elected, keeps his head down because they will come gunning for him.

Jackpine, I like your comment about consummerism and journalistic responsibility.

Journalists are humans like you and me and are just as much a part of the debate. The problem is we have raised a generation of individuals who can barely think for themselves. What I admire about Hedges’ article is that he does show independence of thought. What bothers me is the language he uses which make me feel that he himself feels the threat of polarisation.

We have all been a part of (and benefited from) the “great materialist” dream… a car in every garage and chicken in every pot, or something like that. Unfortunately, in pursuing material interests we have lost sight of values like toughness of mind and moral outrage at social injustice and unfairness.

You can always solve a problem by running away. You can always in the suburbs or move to a gated community. What you cannot do is hide from the truth.

Jackpine, I like your comment about consummerism and journalistic responsibility.

Journalists are humans like you and me and are just as much a part of the debate. The problem is we have raised a generation of individuals who can barely think for themselves. What I admire about Hedges’ article is that he does show independence of thought. What bothers me is the language he uses which make me feel that he himself feels the threat of polarisation.

We have all been a part of (and benefited from) the “great materialist” dream… a car in every garage and chicken in every pot, or something like that. Unfortunately, in pursuing our material intersts we have lost sight of values like toughness of mind and outrage at social injustice and unfairness.

You can always solve a problem by running away. You can always in the suburbs or move to a gated community. What you cannot do is hide from the truth.

The Original ‘Paper & Promises’
the only things that have Real value are those which are Required for Existence- so Energy, Food/Water, employment,shelter….All the things which should have NEVER been sold Off to Profiteers or placed on the Stat boards of Wall street.
Nadar has been nothing but a covert Operative for the Right for YEARS- Please his claim to fame has as much dust and mold on it as McCains.
As for the Other Poser who Unjustly calls himself an ‘Evangelical’ ( St John must be Pissed!), He is nothing more than a representative of those who wish to survive parasitically under the veil of ‘Christianity’.
The call them selves ‘Born agains’, are they not attempting to claim ‘Resurrection’.At what point are these ‘Born Agains’ considered ‘Born’ . is it while in the process of developement or is there a Moment of identifiable ‘Birth’.Are they Considered fully ‘born’ after a ‘Gestation period’, or they have crossed a Threshold,or been Baptised?
Certianly if they have just walked into the Church they can not be considered Truely ‘Reborn’,there must be a process which must completed Ah?
Is the title ‘Religious Right’ not also very revealing? If one is Right then the other must be Wrong…who makes such Judgements. Who has such insight, such Powers…These supposed servants to the Almighty? They have not used this title as a Description of Political location, they have used it as Justification, Thus weilding far more Priviledges then any Mere Mortal should claim.‘Religious right’ is not just an Oxymoron in relation to History, it’s blasphemy and Fundementally UnAmerican. and It’s time we Call them on it,ALL!

Oh shit, the sky is falling…the sky is falling!

Some of us with more than three functioning brain cells have seen this coming and discussed it for a long time now. I would like to ask Mr. Hedges where he and the rest of his journalistic compatriots were all this time. I enjoy petty arguments about whether there is, or is not, a God as much as the next person. But if any group of people has let us all down it would be the journalists who are now so quick to tell us the the end is nigh and paint dystopian portraits of the future.

Simple common sense tells you that a nation whose economic activity is 70% consumer spending, whose employment market tilts heavily towards retail and service, and whose capital flows come mostly from borrowing money is in no position to handle an economic shock or prolonged downturn. But we never heard much about that, not from our politicians or our journalists…who wouldn’t want to do anything that might upset those quarterlies.

So either the beerdoc is right (and he may well be) or we’ll end up fighting it out amongst ourselves. Either way, life will go on…empires will rise and fall and all the rest.

And if memory serves me correctly, Mr. Hedges suggests that we should vote for Mr. Nader so it would seem that he falls squarely into one camp of the populism he’s so worried about.

I find Chris Hedge’s analysis interesting and pertinent and there is much to think about in what he says.

However, it is precisely because there is much to think about that I find myself disappointed in his lack of historical analysis and detachment from his subject.

I hope you will continue to explore this theme in future posts.

“These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency.”
Huh? Talk about living in a bubble. Just because these people take themselves seriously, does not mean that anyone else has to.

The dystopia advocated by Baldwin sounds pretty good to me.  If people decide that is the kind of country they want to live in, who is Chris Hedges to tell them it is wrong?