Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges
A quick bio note: Chris Hedges, born in 1956, with a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, is an award-winning journalist who, at one time, was the bureau chief for the Middle East for the New York Times. He is the author of many books on the very urgent subjects of politics, sociology, culture and history from a compassionate and anti-imperialist perspective. He challenges the impending crises of our times from an indefatigably researched background drawing from history, religion, culture, philosophy, political theory and personal experience. As we are with Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, C. Wright Mills, Howard Zinn and others who would challenge oppressive privilege, we are fortunate to have him. He currently has an interview talk show on www.rt.com/oncontact.
Death of the Liberal Class (2011) by Chris Hedges, focuses, as an introduction, on the anger and sense of betrayal by a young veteran-turned-activist who hails from the core of a decaying society and increasingly rapacious political economy. As this young man struggles with this state, his national heritage, that uses and discards its own citizens, the interests of an oligarchical corporate, military and political class does nothing but pursue and ensnare the labour and products of the common man, according to Hedges. However, reading this book, I was reminded of the warning by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 of the Military-Industrial Complex. I was also reminded of the fact that the honourable gentleman left one element out of the original, for it would have read: the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. However, Mr. Hedges’ work is inclusive.
In his thesis, he draws richly on the philosophical, the historical, the activist, the labour and intellectual legacy of the Western world in its opposition to the limitation of rights, freedoms and a dignified economic life. He is particularly incisive in his attack on those who would espouse yet betray that tradition by preserving the outward forms but destroying their implementation. He offers, in summation, an analysis of such characters, events and forces that have betrayed the people.
The great liberal experiment of the Enlightenment, Mr. Hedges contends, has been coopted by what C. Wright Mills would have called, the power elite, and while that oligarchy mouths its liberal cant, does everything in its power to subvert its principles for its own venal ends.
The liberal era, which flourished in the later part of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth, was characterised by the growth of mass movements and social reforms that addressed working conditions in factories, the organizing of labour unions, women’s rights, universal education, housing for the poor, public health campaigns, and socialism. This liberal era effectively ended with World War I.
What we have here is genuine intellectual inquiry, which the author ascribes to Noam Chomsky as being “always subversive.” If it is an act of patriotism, the highest form of patriotism must be dissent, as said by Howard Zinn, for if the future is going to be better, one must dissent from the present. Moreover, it is in the attituded of constant resistance that Hedges uses his greatest criticism for the powers-that-be who would keep the status quo for their own purpose. I’m reminded of Trump’s delusion, “Make America Great Again,” by taking society back to some mythical time of lost utopia by invincible coercion by the state.
On so many levels are the subversives lost to the corridors of power and acceptability through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Hedges is adroit with the time line. He traces the loss of academic freedom with the loss of tenures. He laments the coming of vapid distractions of mass media substituting the raspy, impolite, radical arts of the thirties in the decadence of capitalism. The propaganda systems, well-oiled, imposed on the minds of the masses have eroded not just the discourse but the potential for its vocabulary. He ends in our own times with the influences of the internet and the matrix of social media over print and voice. He is not forgiving. Those forces, he attests, are those that would most ill serve the interests of the people. Intellectual liberty has been stunted, particularly by erstwhile liberals who have found serving the self a more prosperous and safe enterprise.
He notes:
After the war, as Stuart Ewen [professor of media and culture] told me when we met in New York, all systems of public discourse, communication and expression were “systematically designed to avoid including any information or knowledge that might encourage people to evaluate the situation.” Mass propaganda obliterated an informed public. “Except for those who seek out information internationally or through non-traditional sources,” Ewen lamented, “the entire picture of the universe that is provided to people is one reduced to a comic strip.
The liberal class, over time he would say, allowed its message to be subsumed into the sloganeering of mass communication. He contends that the liberal class was complicit into adopting the ideology of progress—national wealth, consumer goods, advance of technology and comfort—thereby abetting the destruction of progressive, reformist movements. As long as this class did not challenge the tenets of the capitalism they chose to serve, its members were permitted a place in the higher orders of civil society. Any reforms were beaux gestes.
And finally, I would summarise his personal story. As a celebrated public intellectual and journalist, Chris Hedges was asked to speak at college commencement in May of 2003 after the American invasion of Iraq. He condemned the war as he does any imperialism. Although he was the bureau chief of the Middle East desk of the New York Times at the time, when he returned to work he was shunned. His exit was inevitable as I have summarised here. However, the details are better coming from him in his book. His tone was not one of lament, but rather he illustrates his story as a ‘case in point’. He has lived it. He was excused from that table.
It would be superfluous to say that I recommend this book. It is an education, and not one you are likely to find in the senior high school syllabus. However, who was it who said, “If school is your only education, you are not educated”? There, I said it. Just now.