Opposing Capitalist Imperialism: A Speech by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Chris Hedges in Berkeley

26 Friday May 2017

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Chris Hedges Mdiv (b. 1956), Commodus (161-192), Dennis Bernstein, Flashpoints, Greg Bridges, KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Salima Hamirani, transcript, UpFront

LUMPENPROLETARIAT Award-winning journalist and human rights activist Chris Hedges delivered a speech on the current state of the nation at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California yesterday. [See transcripts below.] It is a scathing indictment of US imperialism and capitalism, itself. This is, perhaps, the most courageous, honest, and enlightened public presentation to date by Chris Hedges about the state of the nation and capitalist society. Mr. Hedges has come a long way from the disappointing rhetoric he espoused circa 2008 when he stood squarely in support of the Obama Presidential Campaign (and against the politically progressive Ralph Nader Presidential Campaign). It was obvious in 2008 to keener political observers that an Obama Presidency would surely disappoint, in terms of advancing progressive political principles, socioeconomic justice, and reining in America’s imperialist tendencies.

Chris Hedges’ logical break from the Democratic Party after witnessing eight years of failures and betrayals by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party comes a bit late. But it is better late than never. And abandoning the corporate-controlled Democratic Party is something all people of conscience, liberals, and the left, generally, must do, if they want to get behind a real people’s party. Liberals must recognise and finally admit the inability of the Democratic Party to function as a sincere opposition party on behalf of the working classes. Only, then, can liberals and the left galvanise their political will into a real people’s party, which can oppose the corporate two-party system. For his part, Chris Hedges would even go so far as to sue Obama. He was joined in his lawsuit by other activists and concerned citizens, such as Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage, one of the original organisers of Occupy Wall Street.

In last night’s speech, portions of which were previously published in printed form (see “Reign of Idiots“, Truthdig, 20 APR 2017), Chris Hedges provided a sincere left critique of our society. And he disabused many liberals of their fixation on President Trump as the bad guy, which conveniently and problematically takes the Democratic Party off the hook for its role in perpetuating the socioeconomic ills of neoliberalism, capitalism, and imperialism. “Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease.”

Too often (especially during Republican presidencies) liberals are quick to fixate on a Republican figurehead, such as President Trump or President Bush. But, often, this fixation on a lone bogeyman functions as obfuscation of, and apologism for, the anti-working class agenda of the Democratic Party. The focus is placed on one figure, which, if removed, changes little to nothing about the structure of our political process. It feels good for liberals to bash Trump or focus their energies on his ouster; but that doesn’t fundamentally transform the sociopolitical conditions, which give rise to a President Trump or a two-party system, which blocks all other alternative political parties from meaningfully participating in the national political discourse.

The American working classes must recognise that supporting the Democratic and Republican parties, who are driven by a pro-corporate agenda, is politically against their own economic interests. We need only check the historical record, which is something Chris Hedges helps the public do. Free speech radio KPFA (Berkeley, CA, 94.1 FM) has broadcast excerpts of this new speech and is offering copies of the speech in CD or DVD format, among other thank-you gifts, for donating to keep free speech radio alive and well. [1] Listen (and/or download) here or here. [2] [3] [4]

Messina

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[Transcript by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, UpFront, and Flashpoints.]

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and human rights activist Chris Hedges

UPFRONT—[26 MAY 2017] [station identification]

“Good morning. It is Friday, May 26th. This is UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani.

“On today’s show: Last night Chris Hedges spoke at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. We bring you that speech today. He talks about the dying empire; Trump; the cronies that rise from the ashes to take power; and how to take back. Getting rid of Trump isn’t the answer, he says. Instead, we have to come to terms with the counterrevolution, that began at the end of the ’60s. All this, after the [KPFA] News [Headlines]. (c. 00:38)

[News Headlines (read by Max Pringle) omitted by scribe] (c. 8:14)

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:08 [am]. You are listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. Thank you for joining us this morning.

“So, last night Chris Hedges spoke at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley to address a totally packed church. Um, so this is hot off the presses. We edited this last night to get it to you this morning. I’m particularly tired this morning.

“Uh, Chris Hedges is a KPFA luminary. He’s a writer, a journalist, a minister. He’s a social justice thinker and activist. And he often talks about war, which he covered, and the government—big government, or what he calls the deep state, sometimes.

“But, this time, his talk was a little bit different. I think, coming on the heels of [the] Trump [Presidency], he felt more powered up and a little bit more angry. And, so, he talks a lot about something called the dying empire. And he compares what’s happening with [President] Trump and the rise of the fascists in the U.S. to what comes out of the ashes of the empire as it collapses. But he also some news for how to take the country back and how to fight back.

“And he thinks that the—well, I don’t wanna give too much away. But he thinks that getting rid of [President] Trump isn’t the right answer. Let’s go right to Chris Hedges, from last night.” (c. 9:27)

[First audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

AUDIENCE: [applause, cheers]

CHRIS HEDGES: “Thank you. [applause continues, then subsides]

“I was at a talk a few weeks ago, given by the great Noam Chomsky. He came in with a sheet of papers about this thick and said: A lot of people say I’m boring. And I’m proud to be boring.”

AUDIENCE: [laughter]

CHRIS HEDGES: “[chuckles] So, this is thick. But we live in a dangerous moment. [pregnant pause]

“The decision by the deep state in ancient Rome, like the United States in 2017, dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, to strangle the emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like [President] Donald Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He had commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts.

“Power for Commodus, like [President] Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism, hedonism, and lust for wealth. He sold public offices, so the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin could orchestrate [applause] a vast kleptocracy. (c. 11:42)

“Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted to curb the unchecked power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. This effort saw the Praetorian Guards assassinate Pertinax after three months in office. The Guards, then, auctioned off the office of emperor to the highest bidder.

“The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.

“[President] Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than replacing Commodus restored the Republic in Rome. [words of agreement; applause]

“The choice will be between inept fascists, like [President] Trump, and competent fascists, like [Vice President] Pence. [applause] Our republic is dead. The idiots, seeing in the decay the chance for personal advancement and profit, take over in the final days of crumbling civilisations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars, that bankrupt the nation. [6] [7] Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programmes for the poor and project economic growth on the basis of myth. [8] Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil, and the air, slash jobs, and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence officers orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves, that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, experts, and specialists busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory, that buttress the politics of the rulers. And idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore, and fantasy. (c. 14:45)

“There is a familiar check list for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it. The idiots know only one word: more. They are unencumbered by common sense. They horde wealth and resources until workers cannot make a living and the infrastructure collapses. They live in privileged compounds where they eat chocolate cake and order missile strikes. [sparse laughter, then applause] They see the state as a projection of their own vanity. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, Wilhelmein, Palavi, and Soviet dynasties crumbled because the whims and obsessions of ruling idiots were law.

“And [President] Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. [hesitant applause] He is what lies [applause] behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality, a sputtering, narcissistic, blood-thirsty megalomaniac. This face, in the past, was hidden—at least to white Americans [9]. But with the destruction of democratic institutions and the disempowerment of the citizen, the oligarchs and the kleptocrats have become brazen. They no longer need to hide the pillage. They can steal and lie in the open. They can wield armies and fleets against the wretched of the Earth, blithely ignore the looming catastrophe caused by global warming and canibalise the nation on behalf of global oligarchs, while at night, like some monster from the grande gueule, the Idiot-in-Chief, overseeing our self immolation, sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his beautiful Twitter account. [audience laughter] (c. 17:02) [Hedges’ breath trembles]

“Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget the inanity of a press, that covers the tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, or a reality show starring our maniacal president and the freaks, that surround him. Forget the noise. The crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians, that run our dysfunctional state.

“The crisis we face is the result of a four decade-long, slow-motion, corporate coup d’état, that has rendered the citizen impotent [wide audience applause], left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent.

“The crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalised bribery and elevated public figures, that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.

“[President] Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease. [cheers; applause]

“Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of [President] Richard Nixon, all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals.

“It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organisations, that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research, and the two major political parties. It began with empowering militarised police to kill unarmed citizens [with impunity] and the spread of our horrendous prison system, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. [applause] (c. 19:16)

“It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights: privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections, and dissent.

“It began when big money was employed by political operatives, such as Roger Stone, a close Trump advisor, to create negative political advertisements and spread malicious gossip and false narratives, all eagerly amplified by a media devoted to profits and ratings, not truth, to deceive the public until political debate became burlesque. [10]

“It began in the 1960s and ’70s with a war on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals, which included FBI assassinations of leaders, such as Fred Hampton.” (c. 20:07)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

CHRIS HEDGES: “This war against radicals, President Nixon’s so-called battle for law and order put the police, the FBI, and other organs of internal security beyond the reach of the law. And this power has steadily expanded.

“We are all under state surveillance. And we can all become victims, if the state deems us to be a threat. The ruling elites, terrified by the mobilisation of the left in the 1960s, or by what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called ‘America’s excess of democracy‘, built counter-institutions to deligitimise and marginalise critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism. They bought the allegiances of the two main political parties. They imposed obedience to the neoliberal ideology within academia and the press. This campaign laid out by Lewis Powell in his 1971 memorandum entitled ‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System‘, was the blueprint for the creeping coup, that 45 years later is complete. [11] (c. 21:16)

“And our failure to defend the rights of those, who were demonised and persecuted, leaves us all demonised and persecuted. Our failure to demand justice for everyone leaves us all without justice. Our failure to halt the crushing of popular movements, that stand unequivocally with the oppressed, leaves us all oppressed. Our failure to protect our democracy leaves us without a democracy. The persecution of the radicals of four decades ago is not ancient history. It is the genesis of the present. It spawned the corporate coup and the machinery of state terror. We will pay for our complacency. We are trapped, like rats in a cage. (c. 22:05)

“A narcissist, an imbecile, may be turning the electric shocks on and off. But the problem is the corporate state. [pounding the podium] And, unless we dismantle the corporate state, we are doomed.” [applause] (c. 22:21)

[End of first audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:22. You are listening to UpFront. That was Chris Hedges. I’m Salima Hamirani.

“And I want to remind you I’m cutting into this amazing talk to remind you that it’s actually the last day of fund drive. Today is the last day. And, folks, we’re really behind.

[Salima Hamirani continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive] (c. 28:21)

[Second audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

CHRIS HEDGES: “Racist, violent, and despotic forces have always been part of the American landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to persecute poor people of colour and dissidents. These forces are denied absolute power as long as a majority of citizens—white citizens—have a say in their own governance. But, once citizens are locked out of government and denied a voice, power shifts into the hands of the enemies of the open society.

“When democratic institutions cease to function, when the consent of the governed becomes a joke, despots fill the political void. They give vent to popular anger and frustration. While arming the state to do to the majority what it has long done to the minority. This tale is as old as civilisation. It was played out in ancient Greece and Rome, the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, fascist Italy, and the former Yugoslavia.

“Once a tiny cabal seizes power, monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate, it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state.

“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and deviants, play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner‘s novels.

“The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated former slave-holding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family are fictional representations of the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism. The usual reference to amorality, while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive, and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment, the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses. (c. 30:39)

“Perhaps, the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards, the creatures that emerge from the devastation with the slime still upon their lips. Let a world collapse, in the [American] South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers and musics drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force, Howe wrote. They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees and, later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society, they need only learn to mimic its sounds. Societies, that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey for the enemies of democracy. Demagogues pay deference to the political ideals, rituals, practices, and forms of the old democratic political system, while dismantling it.

“When the Roman Emperor Augustus—he referred to himself as the first citizen—neutered the [Roman] Republic, he was careful to maintain the form of the old republic. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the same when they seized and crashed the autonomous soviets. Even the Nazis and Stalinists insisted they rule democratic states.

“Despotic government, as Thomas Paine wrote, is a fungus, that grows out of a corrupt civil society.

“This is what happened to older democracies. It is what happened to us. (c. 32:48)

“Corporations cannibalising the federal budget are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobile. [sparse, hesitant applause] The pharmaceutical industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage, while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans, that cannot be forgiven, even by declaring bankruptcy.

“The reality is that our telephone calls, emails, text, financial, judicial, and medical records, along with every website we visit and our physical travels are tracked, recorded, and stored in perpetuity in government computer banks.

“The state tortures, not only in black sites, such as the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or Guantánamo Bay, but in supermax ADX facilities, such as the one in Florence, Colorado, where prisoners suffer psychological breakdowns from prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners are released, they have lost their right to vote and receive public assistance. They are burdened with fines, that, if unpaid, will put them back behind bars. They are subject to arbitrary searches and arrests. They spend the rest of their lives marginalised as members of a vast criminal caste system. And that is why 76 percent of those released from state penitentiaries return to prison within five years. (c. 34:43)

“But our system of mass incarceration is not broken. It works exactly the way it is designed to work. [audience applause]

[End of second audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:34 [AM]. You’re listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. I’m actually here with Quincy [McCoy] our [KPFA] station manager.”

QUINCY MCCOY: “How are you?”

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “I thought I was gonna be here by myself. (c. 35:06) [snip]

[Salima Hamirani and Quincy McCoy continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive] (c. 41:36)

[Third audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

CHRIS HEDGES: “We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx understood, would see capitalists unable to generate past profits by expanding markets; and they would, he predicted, begin to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public. (c. 42:14)

“Our casino capitalism has merged with the gambling industry. And it is designed to prey on the desperate young men and women, burdened by student loans, underpaid workers burdened by credit card debt and mortgages, towns and cities forced to borrow to maintain municipal services.

“This moment in human history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white race [i.e., ethnic grouping].”

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

CHRIS HEDGES: “It is inevitable that, for the final show, we vomited up someone as grotesque as [President Donald] Trump. [mixed audience reactions; applause] Europeans and Americans have spent five centuries conquering, plundering, exploiting, and polluting the Earth in the name of human progress. They used their technological superiority to create the most efficient killing machine on the planet; and they directed it against anyone or anything, especially indigenous cultures, which stood in their way. They stole and horded the planet’s wealth and resources. They believed that this orgy of blood and gold would never end. And they still believe it. (c. 43:50)

“They do not understand that the dark ethic of ceaseless, capitalist, and imperialist expansion is ultimately dooming the exploiters as well as the exploited. But, even as we stand on the cusp of extinction, we lack the intelligence and imagination to break free from the myth of human progress.

“Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940:

Amid the rise of European fascism and looming World War, a [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring. His mouth is open. His wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has got caught in its wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.

“The more the warning signs are palpable—rising temperatures, global financial meltdowns, mass human migrations, endless wars, poisoned ecosystems, rampant corruption among the ruling class—the more we turn to those who chant, either through idiocy or cynicism, the mantra that what worked in the past will work in the future, that progress is inevitable. Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished. The taxes of corporations and the rich, who have turned much of our cities into wastelands, are cut, and regulations are slashed to bring back the supposed golden era of the 1950s, at least for white Americans. Public lands are opened up to the oil and gas industry as rising carbon emissions doom our species. Declining crop yields stemming from heat waves and droughts are ignored. War and the huge profits that war generates for corporations becomes the principal business of the kleptocratic state. (c. 47:04)

“Magical thinking is not limited to the beliefs and practices of pre-modern cultures. It defines the ideology of capitalism: Quotas and projected sales can always be met. Profits can always be raised. Growth is inevitable. The impossible is always possible. Human societies, if they bow before the dictates of the marketplace, will be ushered into a capitalist paradise. It is only a question of having the right attitude and the right technique. When capitalism thrives, we are assured, we thrive.

“The merging of the self with the capitalist collective has robbed us of our agency, creativity, capacity for self-reflection and moral autonomy. We define our worth not by our independence or our character but by the material standards set by capitalism—personal wealth, brands, status, career advancement. We are molded into a compliant and repressed collective. This mass conformity is characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian states. It is characterised by the Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes. [scant audience laughter; applause] And when magical thinking does not work, we are told, and often accept, that we are the problem. We must have more faith. We must envision what we want. We must try harder. The system is never to blame. We failed it. It does not fail us.

“And all of our systems of information, from self-help gurus in Hollywood to political monstrosities, such as [President] Trump, sell us this snake oil. What, now, does this resistance look like? It will not come by investing hope in the Democratic Party [slightly delayed cheers and applause], which has steadily lost power, not because of Comey or the Russians, but because it betrayed working men and women on behalf of corporate power [applause], because it used its machinery to deny the one candidate—Bernie Sanders—who could have defeated Trump, from getting the nomination. [applause] (c. 49:50)

[End of third audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

[The following two paragraphs are patched into this transcript from the previously published article by Chris Hedges entitled “Reign of Idiots“, as they followed from the last audio excerpt in the previously published printed form.]

“We blind ourselves to impending collapse. Our retreat into self-delusion is a career opportunity for charlatans who tell us what we want to hear. The magical thinking they espouse is a form of infantilism. It discredits facts and realities that defy the glowing cant of slogans, such as “Make America great again.” Reality is banished for relentless and baseless optimism.

“Half the country may live in poverty, our civil liberties may be taken from us, militarized police may murder unarmed citizens in the streets and we may run the world’s largest prison system and murderous war machine, but all these truths are studiously ignored. Trump embodies the essence of this decayed, intellectually bankrupt and immoral world. He is its natural expression. He is the king of the idiots. We are his victims.”

SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. You’re listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. And we’re just listening to Chris Hedges from last night, a talk he gave at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley [California].

Learn more at UPFRONT.

***

KPFA RADIO—[26 MAY 2017, 10:00 PST]

[Introduction by Philip Maldari]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at KPFA RADIO.

***

KPFA RADIO—[26 MAY 2017, 14:00 PST]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at KPFA RADIO.

***

FLASHPOINTS—[26 MAY 2017] [KPFA station identification by Mike Biggs] “Today on Flashpoints, a powerful new speech by radical activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. In fact, he was in Berkeley [California] last night and he blew the roof off of the house. I’m only speaking metaphorically. This is Dennis Bernstein. All that straight ahead on Flashpoints. Stay tuned.

[Flashpoints theme continues]

DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “And you’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio, this is Dennis Bernstein. And I’m gonna go home and practice saying my own name. I’ve only been doing this for 27-and-a-half years. And the half, the last half year, may have been the hardest. But it is a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you today. This is the last day, the last hour or two of the [KPFA] fund drive. We’re about $60,000 dollars down. It would take a miracle to raise that money. But we can raise that money. And you can start calling now. We’re gonna give you the [Chris] Hedges [speech as a thank-you gift for your monetary support to free speech radio]. But, right now, we’re gonna give you some sound from Chris Hedges, speaking on fire last night in Berkeley. Mike, let’s hit ’em hard.”

[First audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]

CHRIS HEDGES: “[applause] Thank you. I was at a talk a few weeks ago, given by the great Noam Chomsky. He came in with a sheet of papers about this thick and said: A lot of people say I’m boring. And I’m proud to be boring.”

AUDIENCE: [laughter]

CHRIS HEDGES: “[chuckles] So, this is thick. But we live in a dangerous moment. [pregnant pause]

“The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.

“The choice will be between inept fascists, like [President] Trump, and competent fascists, like [Vice President Mike] Pence. [applause] Our republic is dead. The idiots, seeing in the decay the chance for personal advancement and profit, take over in the final days of crumbling civilisations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars, that bankrupt the nation. [6] [7] Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programmes for the poor and project economic growth on the basis of myth. [8] Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil, and the air, slash jobs, and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence officers orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves, that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, experts, and specialists busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory, that buttress the politics of the rulers. And idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore, and fantasy.

“And [President] Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. [hesitant applause] He is what lies [applause] behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality, a sputtering, narcissistic, blood-thirsty megalomaniac. This face, in the past, was hidden—at least to white Americans [9]. But with the destruction of democratic institutions and the disempowerment of the citizen, the oligarchs and the kleptocrats have become brazen. They no longer need to hide the pillage. They can steal and lie in the open. They can wield armies and fleets against the wretched of the Earth, blithely ignore the looming catastrophe caused by global warming and cannibalise the nation on behalf of global oligarchs, while at night, like some monster from the grande gueule, the Idiot-in-Chief, overseeing our self immolation, sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his beautiful Twitter account. [audience laughter] [Hedges’ breath trembles]

“The crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalised bribery and elevated public figures, that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.

“[President] Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease. [cheers; applause]

“It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organisations, that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research, and the two major [American] political parties. It began with empowering militarised police to kill unarmed citizens [with impunity] and the spread of our horrendous prison system, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. [applause]

“It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights: privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections, and dissent.

“It began in the 1960s and ’70s with a war on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals, which included FBI assassinations of leaders, such as Fred Hampton.” (c. 20:07)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

“Racist, violent, and despotic forces have always been part of the American landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to persecute poor people of colour and dissidents. These forces are denied absolute power as long as a majority of citizens—white citizens—have a say in their own governance. But, once citizens are locked out of government and denied a voice, power shifts into the hands of the enemies of the open society.

“Once a tiny cabal seizes power, monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate, it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state.

“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and deviants, play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner‘s novels.

“Despotic government, as Thomas Paine wrote, is a fungus, that grows out of a corrupt civil society.

“This is what happened to these older democracies. It is what happened to us.

“Corporationss cannibalising the federal budget are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobile. [sparse, hesitant applause] The pharmaceutical and insurance industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage, while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans, that cannot be forgiven, even by declaring bankruptcy.

“The reality is that our telephone calls, emails, texts, financial, judicial, and medical records, along with every website we visit, and our physical travels are tracked, recorded, and stored in perpetuity in government computer banks.

“But our system of mass incarceration is not broken. It works exactly the way it is designed to work. [audience applause]

“We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx understood, would see capitalists unable to generate past profits by expanding markets; and they would, he predicted, begin to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.

“This moment in human history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white race [i.e., ethnic grouping].”

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”

“Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940:

Amid the rise of European fascism and looming World War, a [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring. His mouth is open. His wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has got caught in its wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.

“The more the warning signs are palpable—rising temperatures, global financial meltdowns, mass human migrations, endless wars, poisoned ecosystems, rampant corruption among the ruling class—the more we turn to those who chant, either through idiocy or cynicism, the mantra that ‘what worked in the past will work in the future’, that ‘progress is inevitable’. Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished. The taxes of corporations and the rich, who have turned much of our cities into wastelands, are cut, and regulations [i.e., public protections] are slashed to bring back the supposed golden era of the 1950s, at least for white Americans. Public lands are opened up to the oil and gas industry as rising carbon emissions doom our species. Declining crop yields stemming from heat waves and droughts are ignored. War and the huge profits war generates for corporations becomes the principal business of the kleptocratic state. (c. 26:35)

“And all of our systems of information, from self-help gurus in Hollywood to political monstrosities, such as [President] Trump, sell us this snake oil. What, now, does resistance look like? It will not come by investing hope in the Democratic Party [slightly delayed cheers and applause], which has steadily lost power, not because of Comey or the Russians, but because it betrayed working men and women on behalf of corporate power [applause], because it used its machinery to deny the one candidate—Bernie Sanders—who could have defeated Trump, from getting the nomination. [applause]

“And, in war, especially when the heavy shells landed on crowds in Sarajevo, sites so gruesome that, to this day, I cannot eat a piece of meat, you could feel, as frantic family members desperately sought out loved ones among the wounded and dead, the concentric circles of death and love, death and love, like rings from the blast of a cosmic furnace. A life of faith—and we are all called to faith—is a life of confrontation. [applause] (c. 30:17)

“As Flannery O’Connor writes of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, and instructing catechumens,

The dragon sits by the side of the road watching those who pass. Beware, lest he devour you. We go to the father of souls. But it is necessary to pass by the dragon. No matter what form the dragon may take, it is this mysterious passage, past him or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell.

“And this being the case, it requires considerable courage, at any time in any country, not to turn away.”

[End of first audio excerpt featured by Flashpoints from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]

DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “Wow. Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, investigative reporter, human rights activist, a canary-in-the-global coalmine of disinformation and resistance to fascism. That was Chris Hedges on fire last night, in Berkeley, at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley last night, tearing down the place. A powerful event hosted by Hard Knock [Radio]‘s Greg Bridges. [12]

“Um, and um—well, this is it, folks. Here’s the cold, hard truth: We have about $50,000 to go to make it. We have not a lot of time. Now, I’m not sure we can make the 50. But I’m hoping, with some really powerful support, and standing with Chris Hedges on this final day, we can get, we can really take a chunk out of that final bit. We’d love to make it. We could, we could—you have the power, you listening now, you all have the power to make it, to help us make this goal. We can really make a dent. That, I’m sure of. (c. 32:36)

“So, if you want to get a copy of that mighty powerful speech just made last night by Chris Hedges celebrating free speech radio, you can get a CD copy for a $75 contribution. You can do it by dialing, by hitting the buttons 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. You can go online, kpfa.org, hit the pledge button and you are with us. You can use your smartphone. (c. 33:12)

“Again, $75 dollars gets you the CD version. $100 dollars, you can get the same speech last night, tearing down the house, really powerful stuff, uh, $100 dollars for the DVD.

“We have a Chris Hedges collection you can get for $150. And, then, we have a Chris Hedges Magna-Pack. They all have this speech given last night. So, the Chris Hedges Magna-Pack is all Chris Hedges CDs, $375. And the Chris Hedges speech—well, let’s just say: Chris Hedges Magna-Pack, that’s everything, $375. You want last night’s speech? As simple as can be: $75 as a CD, $100 dollars as a DVD.

“It is a most extraordinary speech. It would be—if I could get a hundred of you to stand up right now [for free speech radio], it would make a real big difference in a hurry. It would make a big dent. Can I do that? I’m gonna count them. (c. 34:31) [snip] (c. 34:44)

“If you wanna subscribe for $100 dollars, you can get the [KPFA] hoodie. You can get the pullover, the zipper, in all the sizes. You tell [the phone volunteers] the size. [snip] Somebody gave us a $1200 contribution and gave me 12 hoodies to do with as I please. Can you imagine? All my friends are gonna be walking advertisements—um, not exactly advertisements—right?—’cos we’re non-corporate. They will be our walking representatives. You will be. Get this beautiful hoodie and use it as a talking point. There goes my Brooklyn accent. When I get tired, it comes charging back. And let your hoodie be a talking point for free speech radio. (c. 35:36)

“Frankly, for my money—and I don’t have much of it—this Chris Hedges speech is off the edge. It’s incredibly powerful. And we need somebody speaking with this emotion behind the information. It’s a combination of information and emotion. As I’ve said before, the people, who were founded this radio station, KPFA [in 1949], they were not interested in newscasts, in which you did not feel the broadcaster and the story. They did not like the soap suds advertisement right after the news of war, sounding the same way with the same melodic voice. They wanted the people’s emotion in the work—emotion and information. Information is power. (c. 36:25)

“Chris Hedges puts it together, a Pulitzer Prize-winner reporter saw it all as a New York Times reporter and couldn’t take it, couldn’t be silent. He couldn’t get it in the news page. And he began to speak out. And he has become one of the most powerful social critics of our time. He gave a speech for KPFA/Pacifica [Radio Network] last night in Berkeley, blew the roof off. And we are in the last hour of our [KPFA fund] drive here, the last hour or so of our drive here. It’s 5:37 [pm]; and I’m hoping we can pull out all the stops. 1.800.439-5732.

[Dennis Bernstein continued appealing for listener donations to free speech radio.] (c. 37:24)

“Please stand up. We only have a few minutes left. This is our last chance to really drive this, uh, fundraiser home, to make sure we remain powerful here at KPFA, that we can have these microphones for the people, who need them, that we can build the infrastructure, rebuild the infrastructure here at KPFA and across the [national radio] network. We need your help to do it now. This radio station—you know it. You cannot argue with me on the fact that this radio station is more important now than it has ever been, since its invention, in the age of [President] Trump, in the age of corporate television and radio. We are there to hold them accountable. We are there to give voice to the voiceless. We are there to monitor the centers of power and reveal what the people need to know to make decisions about their own lives, what we all need to know. And we use this marvelous, scrappy, fight-back media as our university. (c. 38:30)

“Make us stronger now. Stand up now for free speech radio! Please! Stand up now. We’re trying to catch up. We’re trying to get close to that goal. And you can make a difference. There are hundreds of you out there, who have not done this yet. Won’t you do this now? I mean let’s make some history. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.HEY-KPFA. Or online at kpfa.org. Hit the pledge button and join us. (c. 39:12)

[Dennis Bernstein continued appealing for listener donations to free speech radio.] (c. 39:42)

“But, either way, we love sharing Chris Hedges. We live—this radio station lives to give a platform to the likes of—there’s nobody quite like Chris Hedges. But we are here to give a platform to Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Alice Walker, you name it, all the extraordinary people you have heard over these airwaves. Name them. Think about it. Think about how you’ve heard Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, who can not get [on the corporate media], who is censored, who is one of the smartest people in the world, the most important linguist in the world [next to Dr. George Lakoff], the most powerful critic of U.S. social policy in the world. (c. 40:07)

[snip]

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at FLASHPOINTS.

***

[1] Do yourself, and your community, a favour and support free speech radio as a counter to profit-over-people radio, which doesn’t keep us informed or connected with our communities. For profit radio prioritises its profit motive over the well-being of our communities. Listener-sponsored free speech radio prioritises community, regional, and national well-being over profit motive. In fact, the nation’s largest (and oldest) listener-sponsored free speech radio network, Pacifica Radio does not operate for profit and is even democratically governed, with listener-members having a democratic vote in the governance of the radio network.

We, the people, need at least 50% of the radio spectrum to be public radio for public purpose, to keep our communities informed, so that they are empowered to make informed decisions in terms of civic engagement and political participation in developing truly participatory and emancipatory democracy. There is no reason why virtually all of our radio stations should be dominated by corporate, for-profit agendas. We need unfettered news and information, which is free from corporate censorship and obfuscation. The radio airwaves belong to the people. The radio airwaves do not belong to for-profit corporations, who don’t speak for the people.

[2] UpFront, 26 MAY 2017.

Broadcast summary from the archive page at kfpa.org:

On today’s episode, host Salima Hamirani plays clips from a speech Chris Hedges gave on May 25 at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Chris Hedges, a journalist, Princeton professor, and minister, discusses the “dying empire” and Trump. He says that to resist Trump, we much look to a counterrevolution that began in the 60s.

[3] Special Programming [filled in for Letters and Politics]. [This broadcast archive has lamentably been removed from public access.]

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

Forget the firing of James Comey, forget the paralysis in Congress, forget the innanity of our dissent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal President and the freaks that surround him. Forget the noise, the crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional state. The crisis we face is the result of a four decade long slow-motion corporate coup d’etat that has rendered the citizen impotent. Left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent. The crisis has spawned a corrupt electorial system of legalized bribery and elevated public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.

Trump is the symptom he is not the disease

[4] We have included two transcripts below. The first transcript below is of UpFront. The second transcript is of Flashpoints, whose broadcast featured more of the Chris Hedges speech. The other two special broadcasts listed below also featured excerpts of the Chris Hedges speech, but were removed from public access before we were able to transcribe them or patch together as much of the speech as possible from the various excerpts. Thus, we have transcribed both broadcasts (UpFront and Flahspoints) separately, despite the repetition of text. This gives readers a better sense of the actual broadcasts, as well as some of the context provided by the two broadcasters, Salima Hamirani and Dennis Bernstein.

[5] Time-stamps in transcript correspond to the running play-time of the audio stream file.

[6] For an example of contemporary satirisation of idiot generals, see the recently released Netflix Original film entitled War Machine (2017) starring Brad Pitt based on the nonfiction book The Operators by Michael Hastings. It is a fictionalised version of the events in the book, based on the firing of United States Army General Stanley McChrystal.

[7] With regard to the United States facing fiscal insolvency, or going “bankrupt” as Chris Hedges said, we must recall modern monetary theory (MMT, or modern money theory), which shows that a sovereign currency issuer, such as the United States can never go bankrupt. In other words, the USA will never face fiscal insolvency, as it can always afford to spend in its own currency.

Our modern monetary system, unlike our monetary system prior to 1971, makes it possible for the US federal government to spend without fiscal constraints. In fact, it was the American desire to perpetuate the occupation of, and escalate the military aggression against, Vietnam, which did bankrupt the United States. But, back then, the U.S. dollar was backed by gold. In other words, the U.S. had agreed to international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold prior to 1971 under the Bretton Woods system of monetary management. After 1971, the U.S. dollar became a purely fiat currency, which means that the U.S. government can spend without fiscal constraints. This is why the U.S. government’s unprecedented military spending, not to mention the roughly $29 trillion dollars in Global Financial Crisis of 2008 bail out spending, does not create inflation problems nor destabilise the economy in any way. However, it bears noting that the American public has engaged in significant political demonstrations to oppose war, oppose war spending, and to advocate for social spending, such as for jobs, education, and health care.

[8] As with footnote [7] above, for an accurate understanding on the purpose and function of taxes and taxation, see MMT. MMT debunks many economic myths perpetuated by corporate media and misinformed or mendacious legislators and politicians. Many economic myths are also exposed, given a close examination of the contentious academic struggle between neoclassical economics and heterodox economics.

It’s safe to assume, by idiot economists, Chris Hedges means neoclassical economists.

[9] For example, we recall the historical record on Donald Trump’s history of racial residential segregation associated with his rental properties. Or, for another example of Donald Trump’s history of racism, we recall his racist campaign against the Central Park Five.

[10] For an introduction to the right-wing political operative Roger Stone, also (critically) see the Netflix Original documentary, Get Me Roger Stone (2017). This documentary, however, tends to romanticise the dirty politics of Roger Stone, a man who dropped out of college to work in Richard Nixon‘s storied Committee to Re-elect the President. As The Wall Street Journal‘s John Anderson has written:

Get Me Roger Stone… ought to come with a bottle of Purell—not just because it immerses the viewer in squalid politics, but because the filmmakers seem so shamelessly infatuated with their subject.

Manohla Dargis, of The New York Times, has called the film a “sometimes illuminating, often slapdash and frustrating affair …”

[11] For more on this history of the right-wing, anti-working class, political backlash against the progressive, pro-working class, gains made between the time of the Great Depression and the 1960s Civil Rights and social justice movements, see the excellent documentary film entitled Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (2017).

[12] Radio host Greg Bridges is a contributor to free speech radio’s Hard Knock Radio. But Davey D and Anita Johnson are the primary hosts for Hard Knock Radio. Greg Bridges is the host of free speech radio’s Transitions On Traditions, “a soulsonic rhapsody of sound”, which emphasises the intersections between jazz, fusion, soul, and R&B.

***

[Trump image by source, used via Creative Commons.]

[26 MAY 2017]

[Last modified at 16:43 PST on 3 JUL 2017]

The 2017 Draft Bernie for a People’s Party Campaign

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by ztnh in Civic Engagement (Activism), Democratic Party (USA), Political Science, Presidential Election 2016, Republican Party (USA)

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Amy Goodman (b. 1957), Democracy Now!, Dr. Cornel Ronald West (b. 1953), Draft Bernie for a People’s Party (2017), The Guardian

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Last night, as has been the case for the last several months, the corporate media ‘news’ commentators on the cable networks were falling over themselves, especially on FOX News, to rehabilitate President Trump’s reputation with dubious poll numbers arguing Trump supporters are not regretting their vote for Trump. One FOX commentator praised Trump’s military decisiveness in various military theatres. The headline at the moment is that right-wing President Donald Trump will complete his first 100 days on Saturday, 29 April 2017.

For liberals, progressives, and the left, it’s a no-brainer that President Trump’s leadership is undesirable. The left, even liberals and Democrats, are in agreement that the Trump Presidency is bad for the American people, bad for working people, bad for the working classes. Yet, to resist Trump, while a necessary imperative, is an incomplete one. And there’s little-to-no need to expend precious time, energy, and resources into belabouring every instant Trump offends the American people and or the Oval Office. That becomes a form of junk food news, a distraction from the more substantive issues and news stories. What the left, and liberals particularly, are undecided about is the role of the Democratic Party relative to the Republican Party. What the left is undecided, or divided, about is where to channel their political energies.

For a long time, the Democratic Party has been seen as the party of the working class, or at least the party, which best represents progressives values. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been true for decades, perhaps, since President John F. Kennedy. Jimmy Carter’s Presidency was milquetoast. And Clinton’s Presidency was damaging to, among other areas of society, the American economy, with his administration’s neoliberal reregulation of the financial sector. Financial regulators were laid off per Clinton’s Reinventing Government initiatives in the 1990s. In the spirit of laissez faire capitalism, the ‘big banks’ were allowed to supervise themselves. And the groundwork was laid for the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/2009.

So, it’s good that we are now hearing some rumblings among liberals and/or the left, which are calling for a rejection of the Democratic Party. That’s long overdue. This morning Democracy Now! featured an opinion article published yesterday in The Guardian by Dr. Cornel West entitled “The Democrats delivered one thing in the past 100 days: disappointment“. Hosts Amy Goodman and Juan González made sure to play devil’s advocate in the interlocution. One gets the sense that, beyond any editorial gestures toward objectivity, Goodman and González really are centrist liberals, ideologically-speaking, who are quite deeply opposed to third-party politics, or People’s Party politics, and quite deeply loyal to the Democratic Party. We observe that Democracy Now! always gives third party voices (for lack of a better term), or alternative party voices, short shrift. Those of us, who’ve tuned in to Democracy Now! over the years, can attest to the fact that their editorial slant leans heavily in favour of establishment Democratic Party types. Third Party, or alternative party, voices are only minimally covered, such as Dr. Jill Stein getting one or two appearances during the 2016 Presidential Election. But, even then, Democracy Now! avoids delving too deeply into the systemic problems with the two-party system and avoids following the logical chain of conclusions, which would lead most progressives, who are connecting the dots between many issues, to categorically reject the Democratic Party and any notions of political validity of a closed, binary, two-party system. The audience of Democracy Now! connects the dots between the various issues presented on the show, which leads them to reject the Democratic Party. Yet, Democracy Now!, itself, seems to not see those connections and continues to structure its discussions, which touch upon party politics, in such a way, which apologises for the Democratic Party and downplays or works to negate third party politics. Some have complained that Democracy Now!‘s taking money from the likes of the Ford Foundation has led them to compromise their journalistic integrity, particularly around the more controversial issues, such as third party politics and 9/11 and so on. In this particular coverage of third party politics and the new Draft Bernie for a People’s Party campaign, Goodman and González spent the entire time trying negate the third party activism being represented by Dr. Cornel West and Nick Brana, the former outreach coordinator for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Dr. Cornel West and Nick Brana were striving to promote the Draft Bernie for a People’s Party campaign to drum up support and demand for a Bernie Sanders-led opposition party. Meanwhile, Goodman and González were trying to persuade them, and the audience, that no third party will ever have a chance, and that we should all just stick with the corporate Democratic Party. And we notice, too, that, when Dr. Cornel West was doing a decent job of countering Amy Goodman’s Democratic Party apologia, Amy Goodman simply dismissed Dr. Cornel West and Nick Brana and moved on to another story. Yet, when more centrist perspectives are being espoused, Democracy Now! will stay on the story until the end of the hour; and one will hear the concern and drama in Amy Goodman’s tone, when she’s really championing an issue. It’s very subtle; but we observe the pro-Democratic Party political preference, which underlies Amy Goodman’s journalism. And it’s very disappointing, from an intellectual and free speech perspective.

But Dr. Cornel West, much to the chagrin of Goodman and González, is correct to place the emphasis of the discussion, not on the failure of past third party attempts at electoral power, but on the failure of the Democratic Party to oppose the worst abuses of the Republican Party and the Trump administration. But the Democratic Party’s failures are, perhaps, successes. It’s not clear that the Democratic Party cares at all about its constituency, as its leadership essentially cheated Senator Bernie Sanders out of a fair contest during the Presidential Primary Elections. As The Guardian‘s Trevor Timm wrote, “Everyone loves Bernie Sanders, it seems, except the Democratic Party.” Trevor Timm cited a recent poll, which showed Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, as the most popular politician in the United States. Yet, the Democratic Party consistently resists his influence, whilst working to politically contain him.

Nevertheless, we recall, Senator Bernie Sanders immediately acquiesced to Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination, refused to cry foul despite the existing evidence, and essentially betrayed his Bernie or Bust movement. Now, there’s a call to draft Sanders into a new opposition People’s Party. But, if recent history gives us any indication, Sanders is likely to disappoint his fans. We hope not. We hope he becomes a staunch advocate for working people the way somebody like Ralph Nader has done. But that’s unlikely, if Sanders’ loyalty to the corporate Democrat Party remains as unwavering as it’s been since the day President Obama called Bernie Sanders in to his office during the primaries, after which Sanders essentially capitulated even before the Democratic Convention took place. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Let’s hope the United States will soon see more robust political diversity, particularly during the presidential debates, than just the political theatre of the two-party dictatorship, to which we’ve been subjected. But some of us, given recent history, have very little faith in the political sincerity of Bernie Sanders at this point. [1]

Messina

***

GUARDIAN—[24 APR 2017] The Democrats delivered one thing in the past 100 days: disappointment

Cornel West

The time has come to bid farewell to a moribund party that lacks imagination, courage and gusto

The distinctive feature of these bleak times is the lack of institutional capacity on the left—the absence of a political party that swings free of Wall Street and speaks to the dire circumstances of poor and working people. As the first 100 days of the plutocratic and militaristic Trump administration draw to a close, one truth has been crystal clear: the Democratic party lacks the vision, discipline and leadership to guide progressives in these turbulent times.

The neoliberal vision of the Democratic party has run its course. The corporate wing has made it clear that the populist wing has little power or place in its future. The discipline of the party is strong on self-preservation and weak on embracing new voices. And party leaders too often revel in self-righteousness and self-pity rather than self-criticism and self-enhancement. The time has come to bid farewell to a moribund party that lacks imagination, courage and gusto.

The 2016 election—which Democrats lost more than Republicans won—was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The unfair treatment of Bernie Sanders was but the peak of the iceberg. In the face of a cardboard Republican candidate equipped with pseudo-populist rhetoric and ugly xenophobic plans, the Democratic party put forward a Wall Street-connected and openly militaristic candidate with little charisma.

[snip]

Learn more at GUARDIAN.

***

DEMOCRACY NOW!—[25 APR 2017] As Donald Trump approaches his 100th day as president on Saturday, his approval ratings are the lowest any president has had at this stage in generations. A recent poll by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found just 40 percent of Americans approve of his job performance so far. Trump took to Twitter to call the poll “totally wrong.” This comes as former presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as one the country’s most popular politicians. The Hill reports a Harvard-Harris poll shows 57 percent of registered voters view him favorably. Meanwhile, some former Sanders supporters have launched a movement to “Draft Bernie for a People’s Party,” urging him to start a new progressive party and run for president again in 2020. We speak with Nick Brana, the former outreach coordinator for the Bernie Sanders campaign, and Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University. His new piece in The Guardian is headlined “The Democrats delivered one thing in the past 100 days: disappointment.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in Boston. Juan González is in New York.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, as Donald Trump approaches his 100th day as president on Saturday, his approval ratings are the lowest any president has had at this stage in generations. A recent poll by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found just 40 percent of Americans currently approve of his job performance. Trump took to Twitter to call the poll “totally wrong.”

This comes as former presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as one the country’s most popular politicians. The Hill reports a Harvard-Harris poll shows 57 percent of registered voters view Sanders favorably. Out of a field of 16 Trump administration officials or congressional leaders who were included in the survey, Sanders was the only one who was viewed favorably by a majority of those polled. Sanders has drawn massive crowds at stops on his recent speaking tour with new Democratic National Committee head Tom Perez as they push to reform the Democratic Party. On Sunday, Sanders spoke to Face the Nation about how the Democratic Party needs to change.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: The model of the Democratic Party is failing. We have the—we have a Republican president who ran, as a candidate, as the most unpopular candidate in modern history of this country. Republicans control the House, the Senate, two-thirds of governor’s chairs. And in the last eight years, they have picked up 900 legislative seats. Clearly, the Democratic Party has got to change. And in my view, what it has got to become is a grassroots party, a party which makes decisions from the bottom on up.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, some former Sanders supporters have launched a movement to “Draft Bernie for a People’s Party,” urging him to start a new progressive party and run for president in 2020.

Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests. Nick Brana is the former outreach coordinator for the Bernie Sanders campaign. He has joined with former Bernie staffers and volunteers to launch the campaign. We’re also joined by Dr. Cornel West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University. He served on the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee during the 2016 election. Now he, too, has joined the movement to draft Sanders, his new piece in The Guardian headlined “The Democrats delivered one thing in the past 100 days: disappointment.” In it, he writes, “The distinctive feature of these bleak times is the lack of institutional capacity on the left—the absence of a political party that swings free of Wall Street and speaks to the dire circumstances of poor and working people. As the first 100 days of the plutocratic and militaristic Trump administration draw to a close, one truth has been crystal clear: the Democratic party lacks the vision, discipline and leadership to guide progressives in these turbulent times.”

Professor West, Nick Brana, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Professor West, this is a point where Donald Trump is at his lowest popularity rating of any president in U.S. history at this point, as we come on the hundred days of his presidency. Talk about why you’re focused on getting Bernie Sanders to run, not as a Democrat—he’s going around the country with the head of the DNC right now—but for a third party.

CORNEL WEST: Well, I was blessed to spend some time on inside of the Democratic Party looking at the ways in which we could come up with some vision. And I was convinced that the Democratic Party was milquetoast, moribund. It lacks imagination, gusto, doesn’t have enough courage. It’s too tied to big money. The duopoly stands in the way of democracy.

Now, when Brother Nick gave me a call and said that he and the others have been coming together looking for a way of breaking the duopoly and trying to allow for poor and working people’s voices to be heard, I said, “Count me in.” And that’s why appreciate my brother that’s working. We’re trying to get Bernie and the others to jump on board.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Cornel, the country has had a history of third-party attempts. Mostly, the third-party candidates on the right have gotten significant support. But they’ve—on the left, we’ve seen the examples of Ralph Nader, of Jill Stein and others in the past, some of which you were involved in.

CORNEL WEST: Sure.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Why do you think it would be different this time if Bernie Sanders did take that step?

CORNEL WEST: Well, I think the Democratic Party is in a crisis now that’s quite unique. And I think that when you have somebody like a Bernie Sanders or a host of others behind him who are hungry and thirsty, and especially the younger generation—you know what I mean?—especially the younger generation, and that’s why I think, you know, Brother Nick playing a crucial role here, among the others, is what excites me, because I’m desperate—you know what I mean?—as a progressive, real progressive, not no neoliberal centrist. I’m desperate. And we’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Ella Fitzgerald, born a century ago. That’s freedom. Can the younger generation built on that kind of freedom? And that’s what this third party is all about.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nick Brana, what about all those young people who were supporting Bernie Sanders and came out in armies across the country? Here he is, going around with Tom Perez, urging people to run for office through the Democratic Party, reform the Democratic Party. What’s the debate among the former Sanders supporters that you and—what your wing represents?

NICK BRANA: There is an amazing hunger for this, especially among young people. It was 91 percent of millennials, people under 29, who actually wanted a major independent choice in this past election. And the majority of Americans actually wanted it, as well, and still do—57 percent. And so, those are staggering numbers in favor of a new party.

And we’ve reached the point where, to address what you were saying earlier, is that what we’re trying to do at Draft Bernie for a People’s Party, the group that we’ve founded to get Bernie to start a new party, is fundamentally different than what the Green Party, Ralph Nader, tried to do, in that it follows a successful model in our own history of starting a major party that can displace an existing establishment party. And that is, pulling politicians who have built a large following within an old regime party, getting them to show the limits of that party and what it’s able to do, and then having them come out, start their own party. That’s exactly what Lincoln and others did in the 1850s, when they started the Republican Party. That’s how the Republican and the Democratic parties began, is when they actually reached the limits of what people were willing to tolerate—in particular, with the formation of the Republican Party, displacing the Whigs at that time over them having approved a pro-slavery platform in the 1850s, and coming out, taking that base and forming a new party. That is what we’re trying to do here again with Sanders. Sanders has the tens of millions of followers. If Bernie starts a party, that party begins with tens of millions of followers. And in my view, Bernie already built the party. He did it during the primaries. That coalition that he brought together, that’s the party. It’s just about formalizing it.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Cornel West, some might say the Republican Party is in disarray, that this is a perfect time for a strong Democratic candidate, like Bernie Sanders, to run. I mean, polls show, including, I even think, one Fox one, the incredible popularity of Bernie Sanders and that he could have won—

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: —the actual presidential race, if he were running against Donald Trump. So, why not push for him to be within the Democratic Party?

CORNEL WEST: Well, there’s no doubt that Donald Trump devastated the Republican establishment for a few weeks. As soon as he moved to the White House, he brought them right back. He brought back Wall Street. He brought back Goldman Sachs. He brought back the billionaires. And he brought back the military-industrial complex. And so, what has happened is that a consolidation of a far, far-right wing—because let’s just be honest about it: Donald Trump, you know, he’s a gangster in character, and he’s a neofascist in the making, so he’s very dangerous.

We do support a multiracial coalition against Donald Trump, but, at the same time, the Democratic Party refuses to engage in self-examination, refuses to engage in soul searching, wants to do the same thing over and over again, keep the same personnel and leadership, and therefore the last thing we need is another neoliberal, technocratic centrist running for the Democratic Party, when the Republican Party is in trouble. And, therefore, we have to have a Bernie Sanders figure or Bernie himself or somebody—we’ve got a number of people who are thinking seriously about this—not just on the national level, but state and local levels, to say, “You know what? Poor and working people need to be put at the center, and we need a critique of militarism. Dropping all these bombs on these Muslim countries, killing innocent people with no serious accountability, that cannot stand.”

NICK BRANA: As Dr. West wrote so brilliantly, the defining feature of this time is that we do not have an opposition party. We don’t have an actual institution in which progressives can build, grow power. And looking at the lessons of the movements that have come before us, there are, for example, the Occupy movement. The Occupy movement was a quantum leap in consciousness—

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely.

NICK BRANA: —in the United States.

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely.

NICK BRANA: But it did not succeed in formalizing that power into an institution. And so, when we see all of this energy in the Women’s March, March for Science, the climate march, there’s this incredible awakening, palpable awakening, progressive awakening, but our task now, I think, is to put that into an institution, in where—where we can actually build strength. And we’re at the point where something like that could really break the two-party system.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to ask about the—you raise the issue of other people also considering a third-party approach, because, obviously, the question becomes—a political party is not just at the top. It’s at the local level. It’s at the state level. It’s in the city councils, in the state legislatures. How do you break the hammerlock of the duopoly of these parties that, when it comes to candidates, they mobilize their forces in every county and every town to assure their candidate is victorious? How do you build that structure?

CORNEL WEST: I think when you unleash the energy of everyday people, it’s hard to know exactly who’s there. I think—I think we’ve actually gained a significant slice of the Democratic Party on the local and regional levels, because they’re critical of national leadership. They know how lethargic national leadership has been. They know how tied to big money they are. So you’ve got a number of local folk who say the only thing in town are Democrats. If a people’s party comes in, my god, they’d be open to it. But we’d get a number of other persons spilling over on not just the local, but the regional and national level. And that’s what’s exciting about what Brother Nick and and the others are doing. And I’m just proud to be a small part of this new development.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nick Brana, the other big segment of the Democratic Party are the organized labor unions. How do you see the response of organized labor and their enormous financial clout and organizational strength on this debate?

NICK BRANA: Well, some of the labor unions actually tried to start their own party, the Labor Party, back in the ’90s. One of the, I think, lessons to learn from that is that they did not try to run candidates themselves; rather, they said, “We’re going to stay kind of within the Democratic Party model.” And that—I think we need to learn from that lesson, as well, and say, “No, this is a full party that is going to run candidates at every level.” And if Bernie were to do this—I think Dr. West is absolutely right—there would be people who would switch affiliation across the board—in Congress, at the local, state level. You would have just an amazing transition.

One of the reasons that we decided to do this was we looked—we’ve looked over the past few months at Bernie. Bernie is working furiously to change the Democratic Party, you know. And, unfortunately, what we’ve seen is that the Democratic Party is still losing supporters. That’s incredible. The most popular politician in the country cannot stem the tide. He compared it to the Titanic. Bernie compared it to the Titanic, a sinking ship, recently, the Democratic Party. And he’s right. And once you realize that people continue to leave the Democratic Party, you see that Bernie’s role is not necessarily as being able to bring people into the party. None of us can do that. People recognize that the party doesn’t represent them. Rather, what he’s doing is he’s slowing the dissolution of the party.

And if Bernie were instead—the momentum is towards an independent alternative. That’s why people are leaving the Democratic Party, even with Bernie there. If Bernie were to switch sides, join—go with the populist progressive current, the party would collapse. And that is something which would allow a genuine opposition party, progressive populist party, to arise, because right now the Democratic Party is blocking something like that from emerging.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Nick, what is Bernie Sanders’ response to this? Nick and also Professor West—you’re very close to him. What does he say about starting a third party, or even running for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020?

NICK BRANA: That’s right. So, this is something that we’re trying to convince Bernie, actively, to show him now is the time to do this. Now is when—now is when people are ready, tens of millions of people, the following that you built. You can actually bring this into a new party at the time. And that’s why I’m really excited, actually, to make an announcement on Democracy Now! and to announce that Dr. West and I would like to invite Bernie Sanders to a town hall at which we can discuss this issue and other issues facing the progressive movement. I think it’s time for the progressive movement to discuss this question openly, Amy, about whether it’s time to have an independent alternative.

When we started—when we started this process six months ago, about, after Donald Trump won the election, I don’t think if you would have asked progressives, is the—you know, in six months’ time, the party establishment is going to pick Perez, who was saying we should stick a fork into Bernie, in the narrative that he actually appeals to minorities, and actually—and be siding, voting for Trump’s nominees, and opposing overwhelmingly things like single-payer healthcare, I don’t think progressives would have said, “You know what? That’s how I think reforming the Democratic Party should be going,” and that that should be going well. And so, Dr. West and I—I’m very happy to have you, Dr. West, in inviting Bernie to that town hall, so that we can discuss this, this issue about where the movement should go.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Professor West, there has been some interesting controversy. I wanted to ask you about Senator Sanders’ support of Omaha, Nebraska, mayoral candidate Heath Mello. Sanders spoke at a rally for Mello last week as part of the Democratic National Committee unity tour. While serving in the Nebraska Legislature, Heath Mello sponsored anti-choice legislation. He was endorsed by the Nebraska Right to Life group in 2010. In an article for Rewire, Imami Gandy wrote, quote, “Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters seem perfectly content to categorize reproductive rights and abortion access as a social issue—a distraction from economic justice and reforming Wall Street, which they deem the so-called real issues. And that simply doesn’t work, because reproductive justice and economic justice are inexorably intertwined,” Imani Gandy wrote. Can you respond to this?

CORNEL WEST: No, there’s no doubt that when you talk about social issues—white supremacy, male supremacy, homophobia—these are not marginal issues. At the same time, class issues, economic justice, also militarism, imperial policies, Israeli occupation and so forth, these are all integral elements that constitute a progressive viewpoint, and therefore we ought to be critical of those who want to pull back on one set of issues and be strong on another. Same is true with our identity politics. We can talk about racism, sexism all we want. But if we don’t have a critique of Wall Street, if we don’t have a critique of militarism, if we don’t have a critique of the way in which class formation is so fundamental, and the increasing wealth inequality, then we have to be critical of each other. But it’s also true that all of us, in some sense, are going to fall on our faces. We just want to bounce back.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both for being with us. Professor Cornel West, now a professor back at Harvard University. I feel like we switched places, Cornel. You’re in New York, I’m here in Boston. I’ll be speaking at Harvard Science Center E this morning at 11:00—

CORNEL WEST: Ooh, wonderful, wonderful.

AMY GOODMAN: —as we continue our tour around the country. And thank you to Nick Brana, who is part of the Draft Bernie for a People’s Party. He is spearheading this. And we’ll continue to follow your movement at democracynow.org. Stay with us.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at DEMOCRACY NOW!.

***

[1] Indeed, even the political grouping itself, calling itself Draft Bernie for a People’s Party, seems Pollyannish or operating under unreaslistic assumptions, at best. At worst, this group may be a shill for the Democratic Party to continue to lend Bernie Sanders (and, therefore, the Democratic Party) credibility and relevance.

But even the group’s representative Nick Brana paraphrases Senator Bernie Sanders’ likening of the Democratic Party to “the Titanic, a sinking ship”. Yet, for some reason, Bernie Sanders is out there “furiously trying to change it” or save it, rather than defeat it electorally with a sincere opposition people’s party. Brana

He compared it to the Titanic. Bernie compared it to the Titanic, a sinking ship, recently, the Democratic Party. And he’s right. And once you realize that people continue to leave the Democratic Party, you see that Bernie’s role is not necessarily as being able to bring people into the party. None of us can do that. People recognize that the party doesn’t represent them. Rather, what he’s doing is he’s slowing the dissolution of the party.

***

Image: By U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – POTUS visits DHS, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55465263

[25 APR 2017]

[Last modified at 10:22 PST on 26 APR 2017]

[The original content of this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to Lumpenproletariat.org. Some of the work(s), which this website incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.]

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Heterodox Economist Dr. Richard Wolff On the Philosophy of Hegel

17 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Democratic Party (USA), Dr. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Philosophy, Political Science, Worker Self-Directed Enterprises

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CNN, Donald John Trump (b. 1946), Dr. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Dr. Richard David Wolff (b. 1942), Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi BA (b. 1940), San Francisco Bay Area, Switchback Brewing Co. (Burlington VT), Trevor Hill (NYU student)

hegel_portrait_by_schlesinger_1831 LUMPENPROLETARIAT—GONZO: Whilst studying heterodox (and neoclassical) economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (which houses one of the USA’s most radical economics departments), one of the most influential philosophers, which came up in many discussions with graduate students around campus, is Hegel. In a special supplemental broadcast of free speech radio’s Economic Update, economist professor Dr. Richard Wolff has improvised a second hour of programming to expand the weekly hour-long broadcast (and pick up the slack for the absent sports-and-politics show The Collision). [1] Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

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ECONOMIC UPDATE—[17 FEB 2017; 12:00 PST] [musical break: instrumental, ‘Eastern’ jazz ensemble]

[KPFA announcement: KPFA meetings are posted on KPFA Event Calendar at least a few days in advance, etc. Submit email to meetings@kpfa.org to receive correspondence regarding KPFA’s democratic governance structure, by which KPFA listener-supporters are the owner-operators of the local and national free speech Pacifica Radio Network.] (c. 2:30)

[Economic Update theme music: John Lee Hooker and Santana] (c. 3:30)

[Dr. Richard Wolff’s opening remarks.]

DR. RICHARD WOLFF: “Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly programme devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our incomes, our debts, those coming down the road to confront us, and those already changing the lives of our children.

“I’m your host, Richard Wolff. I’ve been a professor of economics all my adult life. And, currently, I teach at the New School University in New York City.

Weekly Economics News Updates

[Switchback Brewery (Burlington, Vermont) became a Worker Self-Directed Enterprise (or workers’ cooperative), upon the coming retirement of the two founding members, who decided to democratise the workplace by transferring their shares to the workers. Three cheers for Switchback Brewery for bringing democracy to the workplace!] (c. 7:40)

[snip]

[Next segment, on Trump administration and profiteers, coal corporations, and coal workers (coal miners).] (c. 15:13)

[snip]

Democratic Party Apologia for Anti-democratic Capitalism

DR. RICHARD WOLFF: “Well, an interesting thing happened a week, or so, ago. It was captured on video; and, so, it became a kind of viral story. And it is one, that I want to comment on, in case you missed it.

“A young man at a town hall organised by the network CNN had a confrontation, a very mild and polite one, between a young college student, Trevor Hill, and the leader, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, from the Bay Area in California. Young Mr. Hill cited a poll taken last spring by Harvard University‘s Institute of Politics. And it showed that a random sample of young Americans from the ages of 18 to 29—not just Democrats or anything, but a random collection—no longer support the system of capitalism. They are, either, in favour of socialism or have serious doubts and criticisms of capitalism.

“And young Mr. Hill‘s question to Nancy Pelosi was:

Are the Democrats, your party, Ms. Pelosi, willing to move to the left to accommodate, to respond to, to reflect the views of the young people that are, of course, growing into the majority of American people with the passage of time?

“Nancy Pelosi‘s response was very quick. And I’m going to quote it to you. Quote:

Well, I thank you for your question.

“She said and, then, continuing—her words:

But I have to say we’re capitalist. And that’s just the way it is.

“End of quotation. I think Mrs. Pelosi is quite right. The Democratic Party is capitalist, in the sense that it accepts, supports, endorses, encourages—all that kind of word—the capitalist economic system, that is dominant here in the United States. And, in that way, the Democratic Party is exactly like the Republican Party, which feels the same way about the capitalist system. And I mean all of the Republican Party—the George Bush type of Republican Party, the Paul Ryan type of Republican Party, and the Donald Trump type of Republican Party. Indeed, all three of those names—Bush, Ryan, Trump—are, themselves, capitalists. And, so, it’s hardly surprising. (c. 18:35)

“But this raises a question.

What does it say about a society, like the United States, that the two major parties, that completely and absolutely dominate the federal government—the state government and, basically, most local governments in the United States—that these two parties have no substantial difference about the capitalist system? That the leaders of both parties would respond just as Mrs. Pelosi did, by saying: Of course, we’re capitalist. And that’s just the way it is.

“Here’s what it tells you. There is no opposition to capitalism in the United States, that takes a political form. We know from the Harvard poll, that Trevor Hill quoted that there’s lots of opposition to capitalism in the society. We know that millions of people voted for Bernie Sanders, who described himself as a democratic socialist. So, we know that there’s widespread feelings, views, attitudes, that are critical of capitalism, and that would like a better or different economic system in its place. [2]

“So, here’s what we’ve got: A society with grave doubts, widespread criticism of capitalism, but it lacks any political party able, or willing, to express, to organise, to mobilise that perspective. And that makes the United States different from most capitalist economies. That is, most other countries, in which the capitalist system prevails—because in most other countries, where capitalism prevails, there are political parties, that are critical of capitalism, opposed to capitalism, pursuing other systems—they are stronger in some countries and weaker in others. They carry names, like socialist, communist, anti-capitalist, and so on. But the United States lacks a political party, that could put forward a critique of capitalism and a programme for moving to another system. And, yet, there’s every evidence that, if such a party emerged, and if it positioned itself that way, it would have, very quickly, a very sizable constituency, as young Trevor Hill and his question clearly implied. (c. 21:46)

Trevor Hill (NYU student) challenging Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi [3]

“It makes one wonder whether the absence of such an anti-capitalist political party in the United States really has very little to do with the population’s feelings, views, needs, or desires, and a great deal to do with the concerted effort by Republicans and Democrats to avoid any competition from such a party.

“Please keep that in mind the next time you hear a leading Republican and/or Democrat give one of those July 4th speeches about the virtues of competition, please keep in mind how those very same people, have been and, continue to do everything in their power to avoid, repress, suppress, anything and everything, that moves in the direction of producing a party, that would respect and reflect huge anti-capitalist political perspectives. That’s what was behind the squelching of the Occupy Wall Street movement under Obama. That was, likewise, the squelching of Bernie Sanders movement by the Clinton part of the Democratic Party, of which Mrs. Pelosi was a leading, and is a leading, member. It is important to keep that in mind. (c. 23:39)

A critique of the financial advisor industry in the context of eroded, pillaged, and stolen pension systems

“Our next update has to do with a move by the Trump administration this last week to direct the Labor Department to review an Obama administration rule governing financial advisors. Let me explain.

[snip] (c. 29:00)

Statistics show immigrants actually increase value of property and community

[Statistics valorise immigrant communities.] [snip] (c. 31:00)

[Next, Dr. Richard Wolff appealed to listeners to ‘please share Economic Update and its content’ with their friends and family, on their social media, blogs, websites, and their local free speech radio and TV stations, and so on. Dr. Wolff encouraged listeners, as he does regularly, to also partner with Economic Update to help inform and educate the public on questions of economics and ‘the economic dimensions of our lives’. (Economic Update began broadcasting in March of 2011.)] (c. 37:20)

On Hegel’s Concept of Slave and Master

DR. RICHARD WOLFF: “Alright. I wanna turn to an unusually philosophic subject for the first of our major discussions. And I wanna begin by reminding you, if you’re not familiar with it and I’m explaining it, perhaps, for the first time.

“A remarkable piece of philosophic reflection by, perhaps, the greatest German philosopher ever. His name was Hegel—H-E-G-E-L. And, perhaps, the most famous thing he ever wrote—and he wrote quite a bit—and much of it has been extremely influential in the history of the world over the last few centuries. But one of the most important pieces he wrote was called The Dialectic of the Master and the Slave. And it was an exploration, a few pages long—it’s not very difficult—about the relationship between master and slave because he felt that it had not been properly understood. And he wanted to explain how he understood it. (c. 38:34)

“His idea is fundamentally simple, that the mistake has been to imagine that because the master dominates the slave that the line of dependency is one direction: The slave depends on the master. The master orders, controls, directs, literally owns the slave. The master is active. The slave is passive. The master controls. The slave is dependent.

“The point Hegel wants to make is that this is only a one-sided perspective. It turns out, it runs the other way, too. What I mean is that the master is dependent on the slave, also. And here’s how it works. Precisely because the master can get the slave to do virtually everything he needs, because that’s what a slave means—that the slave is so dependent, the slave is so subordinate, the slave is so slavish—that the master can compel the slave to do everything, and in so doing the master becomes dependent on the slave doing everything for him. And, thereby, the very mastery of the slave makes the master the slave of the slave, the slave of his own dependence on the slave. Or, to say the same thing as simply as I know how, the line of dependency runs both ways.

“The illusion of the master, that he is in charge, is smashed the minute the slave declares he’s not gonna do it anymore. He refuses to continue to be a slave, whereupon the master discovers his dependence on the slave. And, in that act of rebellion, the slave confronts what Hegel is teaching, that the dependence runs both ways, that the slave and the master are caught in a relationship they both depend on. (c. 41:20)

“Now, why do I talk about this? Because it gives us an insight into how capitalism, among other systems, works. Let’s show you that. The capitalist needs the worker. But the capitalist also dominates the worker. The capitalist decides whether the worker he employs has a job or not. That’s an enormous power. The capitalist pays the worker, or not. The capitalist profits from the worker. The worker is dependent for income, for the work, for his or her position in the world, ability to feed their children. The dependence of the worker on the capitalist can appear to be one-sided, can appear to be slavish in many respects. And many workers have felt that. And, indeed, the capitalist acts in a dominating way towards the employee all the time. Let me just give you the two big examples. (c. 42:45)

“Capitalists are forever trying to replace workers with machines, to get rid of the worker, to save having to pay the worker any wage by replacing the costly worker with a less costly computer or a less costly, at least in the long run, robot. The capitalist is always, in a way, threatening the worker with unemployment by having the worker replaced with a machine. [4]

“Likewise, the worker is threatened by his or her employer because the employer has the power, as an employer, to relocate production. [5] That is, to move it. To move it where? For example, where wages are lower—threaten your job by moving to China or India or Brazil or Mexico. There’s another way that a capitalist can threaten your job. If he chooses not to move the production to another country to catch the low wages there, he can bring the low-wage people here—immigration—and get away with paying them less money for the work, that he would have had to pay a native-born person here. (c. 44:15)

“So, capitalists are always squeezing, threatening, calculating, conniving, to save on labour costs, which threaten the worker. The system compels capitalists to do that. They are competing with other capitalists, who are doing it. So, they have to also. They depend on profits to stay in business. And profits can be enhanced by automating your workers or relocating to lower wages. But here comes, now, the other side, that Hegel alerts us to look for.

“The more successful the employer is replacing workers with machines, so he doesn’t have to pay those workers wages anymore, moving production out of the country—firing the workers here in the United States, for example, and hiring ‘less expensive’ workers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or where ever—the more the capitalist does that, the more he is forced to confront his dependency, as a capitalist on the workers because, having cut the wages or removed the wages of workers, they lack the ability to buy. To buy what? To buy what the capitalist has to sell, if he’s going to stay in business. (c. 45:47)

“Herein lies what Hegel would call the contradiction—the two-way relationship of dependence. The worker depends on the capitalist, to be sure, like the master depends on the slave. But the master—excuse me. The slave depends on the master. That’s how the worker depends on the capitalist. But the reverse also holds. The capitalist depends on the worker. He depends on workers to produce whatever it is he has to sell. But he also depends on workers to buy what it is he has to sell. And, if they cannot, or if they do not, then the capitalist is as destroyed, as a capitalist, as the master would be destroyed if the slaves were unable or unwilling to work.

“And, you know, it runs the other way. Workers know, in some sense, even if they can’t say it in so many words, that that capitalist depends on them, that in a way they have the upper hand, even if it seems that the capitalist does. How workers have the upper hand? How do workers make capitalists depend on them? Well, let’s quickly review. (c. 47:13)

“First of all, the workers are the majority. The capitalists are the minority, as it was with masters and slaves. And workers long ago struggled to get universal suffrage, to be able to vote, to make political leadership, at least, subject to [the democratic principle of] one person, one vote. And that gives the masses the power, through the vote, to confront the masters, the employers. And workers use that power, often to choose someone from government, that the employers were at best neutral about or very skeptical about. That’s what the workers in England did when they voted to leave the European Union. And that’s what many workers did in this country when they voted for Mr. Trump after the business establishment made it clear they were, at best, of mixed minds about him. [6] (c. 48:25)

“Here’s another way, that capitalists depend on workers. The vast bulk of the police and the army, the enforcers of the rules of capitalism, are working people. They are not, themselves, capitalists. And, so, the capitalists depend on the army functioning the way they want, and the police functioning the way they want. That’s a dependence of the capitalist on the powers of enforcement, that are workers. But, I’m not done.

“Here’s another way workers reveal the dependence of the capitalist. They can go on strike. They can say to the capitalist: We won’t work. And, you know what, Mr. Capitalist? You don’t make any money. You don’t make any profit. You depend on us, therefore, for your survival, rather like a master depends on the slave, who he has enslaved to do everything for that master. So, it turns out, the capitalist depends on the worker. (c. 49:40)

“And, then, there’s that last little item, that historically needs to be included. Workers can sabotage the production process. And, here, the way to explain it is to give you the history of the word. Sabotage comes from the French word, sabot—S-A-B-O-T. And that was the word for the wooden shoes, that people in northern France and northern Europe used to wear. Some still do. And, when workers were angry at their capitalist employers, they were known—secretly and quietly—to throw one of their wooden shoes into the machinery in the factory and, thereby, to commit sabotage. In other words, it’s another way to remind the capitalist that he isn’t in charge altogether, that he depends on the workers, too. (c. 50:42)

“Well, what’s the message, and the lesson, of Hegel‘s teaching? Master and slave, therefore, is not the master in control and the slave altogether dependent. The dependency runs both ways—between the lord and the serf in feudalism, the same truism. And, now, between capitalist and worker, the same two-way dependency. Well, what happens in this system is that you have two choices. You can continue the endless conflict, the endless struggle—master trying in every way to dominate, control, and profit from the slave; and the slave finding ways to use the dependence of the master to relieve their suffering, to impose costs on the master; and the same back and forth between lord and serf; and the same back and forth between employer and employee. (c. 51:49)

“The struggle can last forever and take up your whole life. Or you can try to make a resolution, what Hegel would call a synthesis of the two opposites. Solve the problem of endless conflict between master and slave—lord and serf, capitalist employer and worker/employee—by overcoming that relationship. And what that means, in economics, is a democratic worker cooperative. Make the workers, both, the employer and the employee. End the struggle between two people, two groups, each dependent on, and trying to overcome at the same time, this dependency and not recognising that they were locked into a relationship and that the escape from the dependency and the endless struggle requires fundamentally changing the relationship.

“That’s why, as far back as ancient slave society and throughout the history of feudalism and throughout the history of capitalism, human beings have tried to escape from those tensions, those oppositions, those contradictory struggles, to form cooperatives, to produce goods in a collective way, that did not pit master-slave, lord-serf, and employer-employee. They did it in religious orders, when nuns and monks would work collectively to produce what the nunnery or the monastery needed. Farmers did it in conditions where a collective effort struck them as making more sense than continuing in the endless struggle of the opposites. (c. 54:02)

“Hegel’s teaching is a way to understand, both, what ails us in a conflict-ridden economic system and where the escape, the future, the better economic system lies. It lies with an overcoming of the contradictions, what beleaguer slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. It lies with the democratisation of a cooperative community organisation of work together with the same kind of democratic community organisation of the residential neighborhoods and communities where we live. (c. 54:55)

On parallels between the Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis

“In the time, that remains today, which isn’t a great deal, I wanted also to draw your attention to a certain parallel between the 1930s, when capitalism crashed after 1929’s [economic] collapse, and our current period, a period after the second-worst crash. We can learn something about what’s happening to us now by looking carefully at what happened the last time the economic system in which we live broke down badly.

[snip] (c. 59:59)

Learn more at ECONOMIC UPDATE.

***

[1] The Collision, a sports and politics show, which normally airs on free speech radio KPFA (and, likely, other free speech radio or Pacifica Radio stations throughout the USA) failed to file their weekly broadcast. So, Dr. Richard Wolff seems to have improvised a second hour of Economic Update.

(Dr. Richard Wolff was a doctoral advisor to one of my professors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), Dr. Erik Olsen, who teaches Marxian economics and Urban Economics. During the spring semester of 2015, since I often cited Dr. Wolff in class, Dr. Olsen invited me to a party at his house, which was going to host Dr. Wolff during the fall semester of 2015. Unfortunately, I was graduating in May of 2015. So, I wouldn’t get a chance to ask Dr. Wolff why he perpetuates the myth that the federal government taxes the public in order to raise funds for public spending. It seems Dr. Richard Wolff refuses to acknowledge modern money theory (MMT), which is taught at heterodox economics departments, such as UMKC. MMT reminds us that the USA operates a sovereign monetary system, which means that the USA can afford to spend without fiscal constraints, including for instituting a job guarantee programme, which can effectively end involuntary unemployment as we know it. It seems Dr. Wolff’s preoccupation with bashing capitalist modes of production causes him to engage in intellectual dishonesty by perpetuating myths about taxation and our monetary system, by refusing to honestly inform the people about how government spending really works and by refusing to dispel myths about our monetary system (or federal money system).)

[2] The institution and implementation of modern monetary theory (MMT) policies in the federal government, such as a federal job guarantee programme, which could end involuntary unemployment as we know it, could function as economically emancipatory institutions for the working classes as well as subversive to capitalist modes of production.

[3] Trevor Hill asks an unscripted and sincere question of Nancy Pelosi:

“Nancy Pelosi Desperately Defends Capitalist at Town Hall” posted to YouTube (12 FEB 2017) by Democratize the Media

In the video above, posted by Democratize the Media, our narrator seems either too excited to smoothly deliver his analysis; or, perhaps, he is persevering despite a challenging speech impediment. But, be patient friends, the young man offers a very sincere and heartfelt, yet clearheaded, analysis of this notable moment in capitalist history. Essentially, most everything the narrator says is consistent with a quality university education in economics. And, if one watches Mrs. Pelosi’s response in its entirety, it’s quite amazing how easily an undergraduate student is able to completely throw her off her game. Imagine if a critical undergrad student of heterodox economics or a graduate student or a radical economics professor (with an ounce of courage) was allowed to go HAM on Mrs. Pelosi in a Town Hall, with follow up questions and all. Wow. All we can say is that defenders of capitalist modes of production have an indefensible position. It’s a mathematical fact that capitalism produces widening inequality. If there’s one thing I learned at university, it is that fact.

In the video below, we can see Trevor Hill’s entire question as well as Mrs. Pelosi’s entire, pathetic and nonsensical, response.

“Nancy Pelosi Dodges the Only Progressive Question” posted to YouTube (1 FEB 2017) by Dey Dey

[4] Of course, here, we wonder why Dr. Richard Wolff never mentions an MMT-based job guarantee programme. I do know that some of my Marxian friends in the graduate department of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (and other heterodox economics departments) are so opposed to capitalism, as well they should be, that they view the job guarantee programme as a form of saving capitalism, or extending the life of zombie capitalism, which has already shown itself to have failed society and the world repeatedly, but which is only propped up with artificial and temporary stop-gap measures, such as bailing out failed banks, rather than nationalising them. (Incidentally, the U.S. government essentially nationalised the major banks temporarily in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis; only, this fact was downplayed by officials and the corporate media.)

However, it’s difficult not to view as a permanent federal job guarantee programme as educational, consciousness-raising for the public, and emancipatory for the working classes, who would come to understand that the federal government can use modern money for public purpose, such as ending involuntary unemployment as we know it.

[5] Also see issues of globalisation from above versus globalisation from below, as well as the wage race to the bottom. An excellent introductory reading is Flat Broke in the Free Market: How globalization fleeced working people (2013) by Jon Jeter.

[6] A common argument posed by political analysts has explained Mr. Trump’s electoral success in terms of his ability to feign a working class populist posture, which Mrs. Clinton was unable to do as a categorically establishment candidate. (Although, we acknowledge that Trump lost the people’s vote, but won the vote of the outdated and anti-democratic Electoral College.) Nevertheless, Donald Trump appeared to be an outsider to many working class voters, especially those with a right-wing political orientation; but news reports have indicated that Trump did meet with establishment elites prior to his acceptance by the Republican Party bosses. This helps explain why Trump’s cabinet picks largely consist of establishment Republicans, including many Bush operatives. And, of course, it’s widely understood that Trump would have never been able to overcome the working class populism of Senator Bernie Sanders, had Sanders garnered the Democratic presidential nomination (or had the courage or political conviction to run as a socialist, Green, or independent candidate). But the Democratic Party, through cheating and fraud, insured that Sanders never had a chance to win the Democratic Primary election.

For more on the deceptive working class populism of President Donald J. Trump, see, for example:

“The Dangerous Deception Called ‘The Trump Presidency'” by Dr. F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 30 NOV 2016.
“Workers of the USA fooled by Trump” by dfmese1, Daily KOS, 4 DEC 2016.
“Guns and Butter Presents The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy (2016)” by Messina, Lumpenproletariat, 7 DEC 2016.
“Hey, White Working Class, Donald Trump Is Already Screwing You Over” by Joy-Ann Reid, The Daily Beast, 8 DEC 2016.

***

[19 FEB 2017]

[Last modified at 07:42 PST on 1 MAR 2017]

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